Letter urging the Senate to reject drastic reductions to the Medicaid program when considering health care reform legislation in the 115th Congress.

With an impending vote on the “Better Care Reconciliation Act” scheduled for early this week, the ADA wanted to take this opportunity to reiterate the Association’s earlier stated position regarding the importance of protecting our country’s most vulnerable citizens by rejecting drastic reductions of the Medicaid program. [...] For example, between 2008 and 2010, 4 million Americans went to the emergency room for dental related problems at a cost of $2.7 billion dollars.1 In 2014, an emergency room visit for a dental condition occurred every 14 seconds in the United States, costing approximately $863 per visit compared with an average dental office visit cost in 2014 of $240.2 The good news is that since 2000, the percen. [...] emergency department visits for dental related issues decreased for the first time since the early 2000s between 2012 and 2013, with the largest declines among children and young adults.5 The Medicaid program’s. [...] The establishment of Medicaid and EPSDT ensured that poor children with public insurance have access to dental care that is comparable to the services available to more affluent children with private insurance. [...] The ADA believes that drastic funding cuts and structural changes to the oral health system will undermine the gains that families have made in accessing dental care and ultimately be detrimental to the entire healthcare system.