Editorial: Tooth decay increasing

Thursday, Oct. 18, 2007 | 7:17 a.m.

In the national debate about how to ensure that Americans have adequate access to health insurance coverage, dental care rarely comes up in the conversation.

But as a story by The New York Times noted last week, more than 100 million Americans - about one-third of the nation's population - lack dental insurance. And this past decade, for the first time in 50 years, the percentage of people whose cavities have gone untreated has risen.

Certainly, some people don't go to the dentist because they don't like to do so. But, more likely, people avoid regular dental visits because access to such care is limited - and in some cases nonexistent - for people who have no private dental coverage and don't have money to pay for treatment outright.

A significant number of dentists don't accept Medicaid, the Times reports, and many states' Medicaid programs don't cover all Medicaid recipients. Although Medicaid is supposed to provide basic and emergency dental care for children, it covers only emergency procedures for adults in most states, experts told the Times.

And a number of Americans who lack access to dental care are working middle-class families with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid. They cannot afford dental coverage or full-price treatment.

Access to adequate dental care must be a more important part of the nation's health insurance dialogue. A lack of adequate dental care can have horrific consequences. One child in Maryland and another in Mississippi have died this year from infections that resulted from untreated tooth decay.

Just as with other types of medical care, adequate dental checkups and preventive care can go a long way toward saving money. Obviously, people whose teeth are healthy have a better chance of avoiding expensive treatments later.

It also is a matter of basic decency. Imagine being a child or an adult who is forced to endure the excruciating pain of a decaying tooth because of a lack of adequate health coverage. There is no good reason why that should happen in America.