A change in the way we look at dental care today
Here’s a recent article printed in this year’s February issue of the Journal of American Dental Association. (Tranby et al. A cross-sectional analysis of oral health care spending over the life span in commercial- and Medicaid-insured populations. JADA 2022)
It’s a great cross sectional research article comparing analysis per enrollee spending on fee for service dental claims for patients aged 0 to 89. The results show oral health care to be the lowest during the first 4 years of life and in young adulthood particularly aged 20-30 range. Medicaid patients tend to also be the lowest in spending at their later years in life due to having multiple teeth extracted and having to wear dentures to replace them.
GRAPHS and NUMBERS, ugh, takes me a lot of time to look over it!!
However, one thing to get out of it is, this graph shows that spending gets higher after age 30 and peaks at around age 60. The other peak to note is during childhood to teenage years. It makes sense that spending is high at the age of 4-18 due to orthodontic treatment and other dental procedures done at a young age. Children also tend to have their insurance covered by their parents. Parents are more likely to bring their children in because of the mistakes they’ve made in dental care.
One important part of this graph is to see the expenditures on preventive procedures at an early age, which DON’T seem to prevent anything during the later years. This possibly is due to the drop off in spending during age 20-30. Most at this young age feel like they can get away with dental care. I’ve had young adults at this age tell me they’ve never had any dental problems despite having not seen the dentist in years, up to 5 or more. SOUND FAMILIAR???!
So what is this telling us….Well, first of all, dental care should never be like this. Spending should be flat throughout our lifetime, not HIGH, but at a constant pace. It shouldn’t peak at age 60 and decline during our later years because we’re losing teeth. It tells us that whatever we’re doing today with our dental policies in preventing disease aren’t working. Like what it says in the conclusion of this article:
“Health policies should be focused on optimizing care delivery to provide
effective preventive care at specific stages of the life span.”
This is why the first step to preventative measures is having good oral care. This includes a good dental cleaning daily: not only in seeing your dentist for your cleanings, but also doing and understanding our 4 step method to good oral hygiene. Click and subscribe below to our free opt in offer.