Discover highlights from the Santa Fe Group’s 2024 Annual Report: an overview of the past year’s milestones, collaborations, and continued efforts to advance oral health as a key driver of overall wellbeing. 

MUST READS

Clearer Choices: Why Medicare Advantage Enrollees Need Better Information on Supplemental Benefits

Highlighting the growing role of supplemental benefits in Medicare Advantage plans and the challenges many enrollees face in understanding what is available to them.

America’s Dental Health Is in Trouble

America has long separated dental health from medical health. In most cases, Medicare, the federal health insurance program for older adults, doesn’t cover dental care at all. Dental care through Medicaid varies tremendously from state to state, and states are not required to include dental coverage for adults, though they are required to include it for children.

Get Ready for a Surge in Tooth Decay

Calgary, Juneau, and other communities that discontinued CWF offer cautionary lessons. A surge in tooth decay is on the horizon, and reintroducing CWF in communities that now see its value is easier said than done.

ADA Leaders Urge Insurance Groups to Cover Preventive Services

Association group pens open letter to third-party payers, Medicaid agencies, employer groups.

RESOURCES

Health Affairs | Payment Policy, Medicare Advantage & More

The June issue of Health Affairs covers payment policy in the public and private sectors, including articles that look at the effects of various options for and aspects of Medicare’s site-neutral payment policy. The issue also includes articles that address a wide range of other topics under Medicare, contributions to our ongoing article series, and much more.

 00:29:20 minutes
Listen to the discussion on oral health care coverage under Medicaid, why coverage varies from state to state, and how two states took on the challenge of providing oral health care to adults.

REASON TO SMILE

This program brings free dental care to remote corners of Maine

Dental students from University of Connecticut Dental School, Tufts University School of Dental Medicine in Massachusetts and the Arizona School of Dentistry & Oral Health and two supervising dentists performed dental services for people in northern Maine with no access to a dentist.

New Mexico made childcare free. It lifted 120,000 people above the poverty line

The state, which has long ranked worst in the US for child wellbeing, became the first and only in the country to offer free childcare to a majority of families.