Medicaid Cuts Could Leave Hundreds of Thousands of Children Without Dental Care, Study Finds

A study published in JAMA Network Open by researchers at Harvard School of Dental Medicine is projecting a significant public health consequence from recent changes to Medicaid eligibility.

New administrative requirements tied to the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act could result in roughly 480,000 children per year losing Medicaid coverage between 2025 and 2034.

The researchers used that projection to model what losing dental coverage at that scale would mean for children's oral health over time.

The study relied on decision-analytic modeling and data from nearly 12,000 children, and estimated that coverage loss would result in close to 96,000 additional cases of tooth decay over a 10-year period

— as families without coverage are more likely to delay or skip early treatment.

Overall, the researchers calculated that those losses could generate nearly $87 million in additional dental care costs over the next decade.

Medicaid currently provides comprehensive dental coverage to more than 37 million children through its early and periodic screening, diagnostic, and treatment benefit.

The Harvard team noted that the financial burden of losing that coverage doesn't simply vanish — it shifts.

Without timely treatment, a cavity can progress to a painful abscess, which is more costly to treat and is associated with infection and other negative health outcomes.

Nationally, only about 49% of children on Medicaid or CHIP visited a dentist in 2024, compared with 67% of privately insured children — and in 27 states, fewer than half of pediatric Medicaid patients had a dental visit in the past year.

The findings underline what dental-health advocates have long argued: that preventive dental care is far less expensive than treating the infections and emergency-room visits that result when decay goes unchecked.