New Managed Care Findings Has Been Reported by Investigators at Harvard University (Dental Services Use: Medicare Beneficiaries Experience Immediate and Long-term Reductions After Enrollment): Managed Care

2024 FEB 28 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Health Policy and Law Daily -- A new study on Managed Care is now available. According to news reporting from Boston, Massachusetts, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, “Traditional Medicare does not cover routine dental care, but little is known about transitions in dental outcomes upon reaching Medicare eligibility at age sixty-five. Using data from the 2010-19 Medical Expenditure Panel Surveys, we examined dental insurance, utilization, and outcomes among US adults before and after age sixty-five, using a regression discontinuity design and segmented regression analysis.”

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from Harvard University, “Among 97,108 US adults representing a weighted population of 104,787,300 people, complete edentulism, or the loss of all teeth, increased by 4.8 percentage points at age sixty-five, and the percentage of people receiving restorative dental care decreased by 8.7 percentage points. Enrollment in Medicare Advantage, which may offer a dental benefit, was not associated with greater use of dental services relative to traditional Medicare, and Medicare Advantage enrollees had a significantly larger drop in dental spending from private insurance at age sixty-five than traditional Medicare enrollees.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “Expanding Medicare to cover dental services may help counteract these effects among all enrollees.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Dental Services Use: Medicare Beneficiaries Experience Immediate and Long-term Reductions After Enrollment. Health Affairs, 2023;42(2):286-295. Health Affairs can be contacted at: Project Hope, 7500 Old Georgetown Rd, Ste 600, Bethesda, MD 20814-6133, USA.

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Lisa Simon, Harvard University, Boston, MA 02115, United States. Additional authors for this research include Zirui Song and Michael L. Barnett.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2021.01899. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

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