Survey Reveals Plenty of Citizens are Struggling to Get Proper Dental Care

According to a recent study on Northern Virginia’s oral health problematic, low income families do not have the access to proper dental care that they would deserve. In the report it is made a clear call to action addressed to the community, to make everything possible and help the low income families gain better access to oral health care services.

According to a recent study on Northern Virginia’s oral health problematic, low income families do not have the access to proper dental care that they would deserve.

The report of the survey has been released a few days ago by the Northern Virginia Health Foundation.

In the report it is made a clear call to action addressed to the community, to make everything possible and help the low income families gain better access to oral health care services.

According to the survey, the main barrier for which only around 63% of the low income families have seen a dentist in the past two years is the cost. Around 73% of the low income families do not even have proper dental insurance; while 2/3 say they simply cannot afford proper dental care.

According to Patricia Mathews from the Northern Virginia Health Foundation, people who live on limited income cannot afford even routine dental care services which are extremely important.

If the dental problems are caught early, treatment also costs less. However, if people live on with untreated dental cavities or gum disease issues, the health problems will get more and more complicated, and thus the cost for these treatments will also be more expensive.

The oral health programs that assist low income people are very few, and this is a very big problem. Medicaid offers very little coverage for Virginia adults, and there are basically no other such programs which would aid these low income families.

The results of the survey clearly show that low income adults struggle with far more dental complications than people with higher incomes.

This automatically has an impact on the social life of these people, because they cannot get proper jobs or they cannot perform well in the work field exactly because of the dental problems they struggle with.

Around 16% of the low income adults have not seen a dentist in the past 5 years; they also generally postpone the needed dental care because they cannot afford to pay for it.

Among low income adults that do have proper health insurance only around ¼ have included the coverage for dental care. If one has a look at the status of higher income adults, it can be noted that 64% of those who have health insurance, do also have included proper dental care coverage.

What is even more discouraging is that low income parents cannot afford to take their children to the dentist, exactly because of the high expenses they would have to support.