The impact of Medicaid insurance coverage on dental service use

The new comprehensive health reform, beginning in 2014, will require Medicaid to expand all elements of coverage to individuals with incomes up to 133 percent of the federal poverty line. With millions more individuals gaining eligibility for adult Medicaid dental benefits, generating an unbiased estimate of the elasticity of demand for dental services is critical. The causal relationship between access to adult Medicaid dental benefits and usage of dental services for low-income adults is estimated, using difference-in-differences estimation procedures to exploit the state-level variation in adult Medicaid dental benefits. Results suggest that adult Medicaid dental benefits increase the probability of a dental visit within 12 months by 16.4-22 percent. A variety of robustness checks are invoked to confirm the finding.