Dental Appointments: Some People Can Get It And Some People Can’t
For American dentists, times have never been better. With dentists’ fees rising far faster than inflation and more than 100 million people lacking dental insurance, the percentage of Americans with untreated cavities began rising this decade, reversing a half-century trend of improvement in dental health. Previously unreleased figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that in 2003 and 2004, the most recent years with data available, 27 percent of children and 29 percent of adults had cavities going untreated.
Many poor and lower-middle-class families do not receive adequate care, in part because most dentists want customers who can pay cash or have private insurance, and they do not accept Medicaid patients. As a result, publicly supported dental clinics have months-long waiting lists even for people who need major surgery for decayed teeth.
Business is booming for most dentists. They are making more money while working shorter hours, on average, even as the nation’s number of dentists, per person, has declined. Partly as a result, dental fees have risen much faster than inflation. In real dollars, the cost of the average dental procedure rose 25% from 1996 to 2004. Dentists’ incomes have grown faster than that of the typical American and the incomes of medical doctors. American dentists in general practice made an average salary of $185,000 in 2004, but today dental surgeons and orthodontists average more than $300,000 annually.
Critics say the association’s plans would do little to solve the basic problem of access to care. Moreover, even in states that have raised Medicaid payments, most dentists still do not accept Medicaid patients. Some dentists do not accept Medicaid patients because they frequently miss appointments, which means lost revenue.
