Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Direction agrees, noting the study clearly identifies unmet needs of older Americans who would benefit from more reliable, accessible and affordable dental care.
“The primary barrier to accessing dental care for older adults appears to be a complete lack of attention — a lack of any kind of benefit from the Medicare program,” he said. “Not all seniors are eligible for Medicaid and obviously Medicaid benefits vary, but this wouldn’t be an issue if Medicare provided basic [dental] benefits for the population it serves.”
Salo noted that one important barrier that isn’t addressed is having an adequate and responsive dental workforce.
“We have found that dentists don’t always make accommodations for the unique challenges of the populations that Medicaid and Medicare serve,” he said. “Not only are there not enough dentists, there aren’t enough dentists willing to work with low-income or challenging populations. Medicaid has struggled for decades to get dentists to participate, and the problems go much deeper than payment rates.”
This article was originally published by Health Behavior News Service, part of the Center for Advancing Health.
Why Seniors Face Barriers To Critical Dental Care was originally published on blackdoctor.org
