Americans Want Oral Health Care They Can Afford: Congress Must Protect and Expand Dental Coverage

This fall, health care costs are weighing heavily on families across the country. Too many people are delaying care and making impossible choices between a medical bill and the rent. And in many ways, a visit to the dentist perfectly captures the typical experience far too many families face across the entire health care system: limited access to coverage, and high out-of-pocket costs once you do get care.

Oral health care is central to overall health and wellness, and going without it carries real consequences. An untreated infection can mean missed work and school, a costly trip to the emergency room, and worsening chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease. Yet our health care system still treats dental care as an add-on rather than essential care, leaving millions of people exposed to high costs and preventable harm.

Voters understand this. New polling shows that expanding dental coverage is among the rare health policy ideas that unites Americans across party lines. However, instead of building on that consensus, Congress made deep cuts to Medicaid and eliminated premium affordability lifelines, pushing dental care further out of reach for millions, just as families are pleading for relief from high costs.

Voters Across the Political Spectrum Want Better Dental Coverage

At a time when Americans are deeply divided on so many issues, dental coverage stands out as common ground. A new national poll from CareQuest Institute for Oral Health found that roughly 9 in 10 voters support better dental coverage for older adults, people with disabilities, and veterans, with strong majorities of both Democrats and Republicans behind each policy.

Voters tied oral health directly to the issue they care about most: cost. Respondents named the cost of health care, including dental care, as a top concern. They see stronger dental coverage in Medicare and Medicaid as a way to expand their choices and to catch problems early, before they become more painful and more expensive to treat.

The numbers are striking: 98% of Democrats, 86% of Republicans and 92% of Independents support adding dental coverage to Medicare. And 95% of Democrats and 80% of Republicans favor incentives for dentists to accept all types of insurance, including Medicaid.

H.R. 1 Put Dental Care at Risk for Millions of Families

Medicaid covers more than 75 million people, or about one in five people living in the U.S., and it serves as a critical lifeline to dental care for children, people with disabilities, older adults, and families with low incomes. Twenty-three million adults get their dental coverage through Medicaid, but H.R. 1 threatens that coverage in two significant ways.

First, the law will push eligible people off coverage through unnecessary red tape. Work reporting requirements, which the Trump administration’s recent rulemaking made even more draconian, and new eligibility checks will bury millions of families in unnecessary paperwork. Experience shows these hurdles do little to promote work. Instead, they strip coverage from people who remain eligible. And when families lose Medicaid, they lose their dental coverage right along with it.

Second, H.R. 1 squeezes the state budgets that keep Medicaid running, putting adult dental benefits squarely on the chopping block. The law freezes the provider taxes that states rely on to finance their programs and gradually lowers the cap on those taxes. Because adult dental coverage is an optional Medicaid benefit, it’s often among the first things states cut when budgets tighten. In response to H.R.1 budget pressures, Massachusetts recently capped non-emergency adult dental benefits at $1,750 and California eliminated adult dental coverage for people with certain immigration status.

We have seen what happens when states make those cuts. When Oregon, California, Maryland, and Pennsylvania previously eliminated adult dental benefits, emergency room visits for dental problems rose, and so did overall costs — especially since an ER visit costs roughly three times as much as a standard dental visit. Cutting dental coverage does not save money, so much as it moves the costs onto families, hospitals, and safety-net providers, while leaving people in pain that could have been prevented.

Congress Should Close the Gaps in Dental Coverage

Even before H.R. 1, approximately 72 million adults (roughly a quarter of U.S. adults) lack dental insurance. Making matters worse, having coverage doesn’t guarantee affordable care. Many plans pay only half the cost of major work like crowns and root canals, and annual maximums of $1,000 to $2,000 often run out just when people need care the most. Instead of making care harder to get, Congress should close those gaps, starting with Medicare and Medicaid.

Traditional Medicare offers no comprehensive dental benefit, which means millions of older adults and people with disabilities lose coverage at precisely the point in life when their oral health needs tend to grow. Older adults and people with disabilities have paid into Medicare throughout their working lives, and voters overwhelmingly agree that the program should cover their oral health. In Medicaid, states decide whether to cover adult dental care. The result is a patchwork where access to a cleaning or a filling depends on a state’s budget, and H.R. 1’s cuts will only widen those gaps.

Sen. Alsobrooks and Rep. Barragán are champions on these issues and introduced the Medicare Dental Benefit Act of 2026 (S. 5086/H.R. 9832), which would add comprehensive oral health coverage to Medicare Part B and help enrollees with low incomes afford care. They also introduced the Medicaid Dental Act of 2026 (S.5091/H.R.9831), that ends that patchwork by requiring adult dental coverage in Medicaid in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Congress must also protect Medicaid coverage from the harms of H.R. 1 by reversing the paperwork barriers and financing cuts that will drive eligible people off of coverage, and by giving states the resources they need to maintain the benefits families depend on, including dental care.

Together, these steps would mean fewer emergency room visits, fewer families taking on dental debt, and more people able to work, eat, speak, and smile without pain. Lawmakers who are serious about lowering costs can start by adding a comprehensive dental benefit to Medicare and making adult dental coverage a guaranteed part of Medicaid. Because oral health is health, and it is long past time our health care system treated it that way.