Oral Health Case Study

Health has been acknowledged as fundamental human right and oral health is a vital part of overall health and can be called the first line of contact to the human body. Behavioral and social factors significantly impact oral health. Diet, oral hygiene practices, pain control, treatment adherence, dental anxiety, oral health knowledge and literacy, access to healthcare and dental insurance, as well as other socioeconomic factors, are some of the many behavioral and social oral health-related issues. Americans are enjoying increasing level of oral health. However, oral health improvements and dental care services are not being experienced evenly across the population. The poor, some racial and ethnic minorities, institutionalized elderly people

Furthermore, the unaffordable cost of dental treatment has been the main interference which dispossesses people from using the services, especially with the lack of dental care coverage in medical insurance or when there is a low reimbursement rates for dental professionals from insurance companies (Garla, Satish, & Divya, 2014). Based on the data analyzed from the 1994 National Access to Care Survey, Mueller, Schure, & Paramore, 1998 found that 8.5 percent of the US population needed dental treatment, but did not readily find basic dental care. The frequency of untreated dental diseases varied by demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, income and health insurance status. They conclude that financial barriers to access are significant in explaining the prevalence of needed dental care (Mueller, Schur, & Paramore, 1998). Generally, the high cost of health care services is due to the increasing demand for health facilities, developing technology of health care, lacking incentives, seeking higher quality treatment and general inflation (Garla et al., 2014; Glavind et al.,

Also, Federal government necessitates that all states cover emergency dental care for relief of pain, trauma, or infection for adults on Medicaid, while coverage of preventive dental services is optional. As a result, there is great variation in Medicaid dental care coverage throughout the states. Most states in the north offer preventive dental care coverage for adults on Medicaid, while most states in the south don’t. Over time, dental care coverage has been changed. Some states, added some comprehensive dental care services for adults on Medicaid in the last decade, while others, removed it in the same period (Garla et al.,