Types of Dental Insurance Discussion - Assignment Example

Private dental insurance also exists in the form of directly purchased insurance which mainly covers high-income individuals. On the other hand, public dental insurance comprises of Federal and state programs created to increase accessibility to dental care among children and people with special needs. The main public insurance includes the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and the Medicaid program (Bloom & Cohen, 2008). CHIP provides limited dental insurance coverage to only enrolled children under the age of 19, whereas Medicaid covers people under the age of 21 years.

Following the age restriction in public dental insurance, individuals above the age of 21 years and below 65 years are covered by private insurance. Directly purchased dental insurance involves different types of plans including a comprehensive plan, a single dental plan, and a combination of the single and the comprehensive plan (Bloom & Cohen, 2008). Public insurance, such as CHIP and Medicaid, have played a significant role in promoting improved oral health through preventive measures, especially through its focus on children. On the other hand, a significant number of adults ineligible for public insurance lack dental coverage leading to limited access to dental health care services.
Studies have shown that people with directly purchased dental insurance make greater use of the available dental care services compared to individuals with public dental coverage (Bloom & Cohen, 2008). Nevertheless, since preventive care is crucial in promoting improved dental health, the government should use public dental insurance such as Medicaid and CHIP, but open them to all people to cover adults between the age of 21 and 65. This is because such programs can address disparities in accessibility to dental care services associated with income disparity among Americans.

Ethics and Insurance

Despite the establishment of public dental care insurance, such as Medicaid and CHIP, to increase access to dental care among children from low-income families, such children continue to experience limited access to crucial dental care services. Studies have shown that too few dentists show the willingness to provide care to low-income populations either covered by public dental insurance or without dental coverage (Liu, Probst, Martin, Wang & Salinas, 2007). It is estimated that about 20 percent of dentists offer their services to individuals with Medicaid insurance coverage with the majority of this group only showing limited commitment to serving chronically ill poor patients. In addition, some states limit the types of services covered under Medicaid with some limiting such services to only emergency dental services for adults.

The main ethical and moral issues arising from the failure of the majority of practicing dentists to provide care to low-income individuals or poor people with or without Medicaid insurance revolve around the commitment by all dentists to provide access to dental care for all. Dentists commit themselves to focusing on improving dental health and reducing the overall cost of dental care access throughout their services. In this case, discriminative provision of dental care based on income disparity amount to a breach of this commitment especially when dentists fail to attend to individuals with public cover or without money to pay for the dental services (Liu, Probst, Martin, Wang & Salinas, 2007).

Another ethical issue arising from the limited access to dental care among poor people or children legible for the Medicare program includes accountability. Dental care institutions and primary care organizations should be accountable for the implementation of the Medicaid program by ensuring that their staff members provide dental services without discrimination. Therefore, the limited access to dental care among the poor raises the ethical issue of accountability among healthcare institutions’ administrators. It is, indeed, unethical to discriminate against patients based on social status, race, or gender, a phenomenon that is rampant in the provision of dental healthcare services.

The ethical dilemma revolving around the principle of justice or fairness emerges in a scenario where a child with rampant caries requires intervention and neither the child nor the parent qualifies for the public insurance. The principle of fairness or justice requires equitable considerations in which issues such as the magnitude of the need, merit, and ability to pay among other factors must be put into consideration (Gluck & Morganstein, 2002). In this case, as a dentist, one is required to show high levels of professionalism in their actions and choices, based on their training and the dental care institution regulations. Therefore, the dentist must try to balance the needs of the patient, the financial interests of the institution as well as professional issues. The dentist is bound by the ethical and moral commitment to provide equitable dental services to all while on the other hand professional issues revolving around safeguarding the employer’s interest need to be considered in this scenario. Read More