What does Medicaid cover for dental for adults?
According to a CareQuest Institute report on Medicaid adult dental benefits, 17 states offer additional dental coverage to specific beneficiary groups, including pregnant and postpartum adults, adults with developmental and/or intellectual disabilities, and adults utilizing long-term care.
The report includes a rubric of states offering different coverage to specific groups of adult beneficiaries within eight categories, including annual benefit maximum, diagnostic, preventive, restorative, endodontic, periodontal, prosthodontic, and extraction.
Additional Key Findings
- Ten states cover dental services for pregnant adults that are not provided to other adult beneficiaries. Three states continue to provide these services to postpartum adults.
- Eleven states cover dental services for adults with intellectual or developmental disabilities that are not provided to other adult beneficiaries.
- Three states cover dental services for adults utilizing long-term care that are not provided to other adult beneficiaries.
Medicaid adult dental benefits are classified as “optional,” which means that states can limit or exclude adult dental services covered.
You may also be interested in:
- Medicaid Adult Dental Coverage Checker, an interactive tool for policymakers, administrators, and advocates to easily understand where a given state’s Medicaid adult dental benefits package falls on a continuum from no dental benefits to extensive benefits.
- Medicaid Adult Dental Benefits: A Progress Report and a Look to the Future, a blog by a policy expert that analyzes adult dental benefit expansions in 2023 and what's ahead in 2024.
- Uninsured and in Need, a visual report that estimates more than 68 million US adults do not have dental insurance.
