With the 2024 presidential election approaching, many healthcare leaders are keeping an eye on each candidate's stances on healthcare policies.
Dental care specifically has come into the spotlight more as dental industry leaders and patients look to increase accessibility and affordability.
A recent national poll from the CareQuest Institute for Oral Health showed that 92% of voters across the political spectrum support adding dental coverage to Medicare. They also support expanding dental benefits for veterans.
Tim Walz, the vice president nominee for the Democratic Party, could help advance certain oral healthcare initiatives based on his actions as the current governor of Minnesota, according to Melissa Burroughs, the director of policy at CareQuest Institute for Oral Health.
"With any candidate who gets elected, we hope that there will be a renewed focus on improving healthcare and advancing health equity," Ms. Burroughs told Becker's. "We know the Biden-Harris administration has a track record of working on these issues, and we know Gov. Walz has a track record working on these issues in his state of Minnesota. The Trump and Vance ticket doesn't have as much of a track record on these issues, but we hope they will care about them as well because they are incredibly popular with voters and much needed."
Under Gov. Walz' leadership, Minnesota added comprehensive dental care coverage for adult Medicaid beneficiaries in 2023. Minnesota was also recently ranked as having the best healthcare systems and best healthcare overall by WalletHub.
"Minnesota is known for being really cutting-edge in terms of healthcare costs, healthcare access and health outcomes, and that comes from a focus on a lot of different health issues," Ms. Burroughs said. "They've done a lot to ensure that prescription drugs [and] healthcare in general is affordable. This improvement to their Medicaid adult dental benefit has been a really big deal in ensuring their citizens can get the care they need. Combined with some of these other important health policy improvements, all of that together advances health overall, and as we know, oral health is very connected to that."
The Democratic Party voted to approve its party platform Aug. 19. The platform lists several of the party's priorities and goals, including expanding dental, vision and hearing benefits under Medicare.
Ms. Burroughs said oral health has mostly been an afterthought during previous elections, but now more attention is being drawn to it as people realize its connection to overall health.
"For far too long, it just wasn't well understood how important oral health was to our overall health, and how a lack of oral healthcare can exacerbate not only health problems, but healthcare costs," she said. "We're seeing more and more of that research and that clinical understanding, so the conversation has picked up. There's much more both policymaker awareness and public awareness of the need, but it's not yet been enough, so we hope that just keeps moving forward."