Are Medicaid and Private Dental Insurance Payment Rates for Pediatric Dental Care Services Keeping up with Inflation?

A number of enabling conditions are important to ensure Medicaid beneficiaries can access dental care. These include provider incentives such as reimbursement levels, patient and provider outreach, streamlined administrative processes, innovative workforce models, and patient navigators. Although Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) must provide dental benefits for children in each state,1 without sufficient enabling conditions, enrollees may not be able to access dental care.