The Effect of Medicaid Payment Rates on Access to Dental Care Among Children

50 Pages Posted: 12 Jul 2013 Last revised: 7 Jul 2023

See all articles by Tom Buchmueller

Tom Buchmueller

University of Michigan - Stephen M. Ross School of Business

Sean Orzol

Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.

Lara D. Shore-Sheppard

Williams College - Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Date Written: July 2013

Abstract

Historically, low Medicaid reimbursement rates have limited the willingness of health care providers to accept Medicaid patients, leading to access problems in many communities. This problem has been especially acute in the case of dental care. We combine data from several sources to examine the effect of payment rates on access to dental care among children on Medicaid and on dentists' participation in the program. The main utilization analysis is based on data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation combined with data on Medicaid payment rates and private market dental fees for the years 2001 to 2010. Conditioning on state fixed effects, we find a modest, but statistically significant, positive relationship between Medicaid payment rates and several measures of dental care utilization. We find a comparable effect in aggregate data reported by state Medicaid programs. The most likely explanation for this result is that higher fees increase the number of dentists that accept Medicaid patients. We test this hypothesis directly using data from annual surveys of dentists conducted by the American Dental Association between 1999 and 2009. The results indicate a positive and statistically significant effect of Medicaid payment rates on whether a dentist treats any publicly insured patients and the percent of the practice's patients who have public insurance. Similar to the utilization results, the magnitude of the effect is relatively small. As a result, the estimates imply that increasing Medicaid payments to the level of private market fees would increase access to care, but the incremental cost of the additional visits induced would be very high.

Suggested Citation

Buchmueller, Tom and Orzol, Sean and Shore-Sheppard, Lara Dawn, The Effect of Medicaid Payment Rates on Access to Dental Care Among Children (July 2013). NBER Working Paper No. w19218, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2292838

Tom Buchmueller (Contact Author)

University of Michigan - Stephen M. Ross School of Business ( email )

701 Tappan Street
Ann Arbor, MI MI 48109
United States

Sean Orzol

Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. ( email )

Lara Dawn Shore-Sheppard

Williams College - Department of Economics ( email )

Williamstown, MA 01267
United States
413-597-2226 (Phone)
413-597-4045 (Fax)

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
43
Abstract Views
372
PlumX Metrics