The Seattle Occasions has appropriately recognized a serious well being drawback in Washington: how dental insurance coverage practices restrict entry to high-quality, inexpensive oral well being care [“Seattle-area dental insurance is ‘like a joke.’ But few are smiling,” June 14, Business].
The American Dental Affiliation, Washington State Dental Affiliation and native dental societies are dedicated to growing entry to care for everybody within the state. Our members take part in free clinics across the state, and on any given day in Washington, you’ll discover dentists visiting faculties, touring to underserved communities in cellular clinics, or of their places of work, offering uncompensated care to these in want.
We each have supplied volunteer care and know firsthand what a distinction dental care could make in individuals’s lives. However volunteer efforts alone usually are not sufficient to resolve this drawback. That’s why dental organizations help the brand new College of Dental Drugs at Pacific Northwest College of Well being Sciences in Yakima, scheduled to open in fall 2025. PNWU is not going to solely enhance the variety of new dentists, however its revolutionary instructional mannequin will place dental college students in three federally certified well being facilities in Kennewick, Tacoma and Yakima to look after underserved populations.
Equally, we supported elevated state funding to broaden the College of Washington College of Dentistry’s Regional Initiatives in Dental Schooling program. RIDE college students start their coaching in Spokane after which transfer to rural areas to finish their educations. Most go on to follow in rural communities, the place the necessity can be nice and difficult to satisfy.
Past training methods to extend the variety of training dentists, Washington should deal with underlying points with dental advantages identified within the article. Non-public dental “insurance coverage,” whether or not supplied by an employer or bought straight by a affected person, shouldn’t be truly insurance coverage. It’s a pay as you go advantages plan sometimes paying a bigger share of prices for the least costly care and a smaller share on costlier and complicated procedures. Plans have maintained the identical annual profit maximums (sometimes $1,500 to $2,000) for many years.
Whereas complete reform is required, one necessary step the Legislature might take subsequent session is to enact laws making certain that sufferers are getting their cash’s price from the premiums they pay. They might do this by requiring that not less than 83% of the cash insurance coverage corporations acquire be spent on precise dental care. Plans which might be unable or unwilling to satisfy that share would both must problem refunds or be prohibited from working in Washington.
This easy requirement, overwhelmingly adopted by a 2022 poll measure in Massachusetts, would forestall dental insurers from spending an inappropriate share of premium {dollars} on greater administrative bills, lavish government salaries and heftier company earnings. It might additionally curb the present follow of providing much less fascinating plans to people and small companies to subsidize extra beneficiant advantages for these in giant employer teams. Most necessary, it will cut back customers’ out-of-pocket bills for care.
Washington offers public dental advantages by means of its Medicaid program. We applaud the investments that the Legislature made lately to extend funding for pediatric and grownup care in these chronically underfunded applications. However these will increase have successfully solely taken reimbursements from 25% to round 45% of common business reimbursement charges. We stay dedicated to working with all stakeholders to enhance the state’s dental Medicaid program.
Lastly, lawmakers ought to assist cut back the intense dental hygienist scarcity that limits entry to necessary preventive care and drives up prices. They will do this by creating a brand new license for dental assistants who carry out primary preventive care. This mannequin, utilized in tribal communities, would enable present hygienists, who’re in more and more brief provide, to concentrate on the extra complicated procedures they’re educated to carry out. It might additionally present a practical profession ladder for extra younger individuals trying to construct careers in dentistry and assist appeal to a extra numerous workforce to serve all sufferers.
Entry to high quality, inexpensive oral well being care is a serious problem in Washington. As dentists, we urge the Legislature to proceed our partnership in preventing this combat.
