Dental insurance and its effects among the elderly in Ontario

This paper examines the association between dental insurance, dental utilization and oral health outcomes among elderly people living independently in two communities in Ontario. Dental insurance had no independent effect on use of dental services, dissatisfaction with oral health status or clinically defined treatment needs. However, dentate attenders were less likely to be dissatisfied with their oral health and less likely to need dental treatment than those defined as non-attenders. One unexpected finding was that the dentate elderly had higher levels of utilization than is often reported in the literature but still had high levels of treatment need.