Mr. President, I rise today with my colleague Senator Wicker to bring your attention to our proposed Dental Loan Repayment Assistance Act. This legislation will provide incentives for dental and…
Mr. President, I rise today with my colleague Senator Wicker to bring your attention to our proposed Dental Loan Repayment Assistance Act. This legislation will provide incentives for dental and dental hygiene graduates to remain as dental school faculty by eliminating certain loan assistance benefits from being counted as taxable income. We rely on dental faculty to train the next generation of oral health providers, but too often, these educators find themselves pushed to work in private practice in order to pay off their student loans. The Dental Loan Repayment Assistance Act will ease some of this financial burden and allow faculty to stay where they are most needed.
There are currently over 5,000 dental health professional shortage areas nationwide--areas where it is hard to find a dental provider even with insurance coverage. By 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) projects that the United States will have a national shortage of 15,000 dentists. We can only hope to solve this problem if we can recruit and retain enough faculty to train the next generation of dentists and dental hygienists. Crippling educational debt should not prevent our Nation from having the oral health care providers it needs, and this bill will help address that.
I would also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge that February is National Children's Dental Health Month. Since 1981, this month has afforded us the opportunity to acknowledge the importance of children's dental health. We recognize the significant strides we have made, but we also acknowledge the work that remains to be done. I invite my colleagues to join me to use this month to renew our commitment to ensuring that all children in our country have access to affordable and comprehensive dental services. To echo Former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, ``there is no health without oral health.''
Despite being largely preventable, tooth decay is the single most common chronic health condition among children and adolescents in the United States. It is four times more common than early-childhood obesity, five times more common than asthma, and 20 times more common than diabetes. Among children in families living below the federal poverty line, 52 percent have cavities. Children with cavities in their primary or ``baby'' teeth are three times more likely to develop cavities in their permanent, adult teeth, and the early loss of baby teeth can make it harder for permanent teeth to grow in properly. If tooth decay is left untreated, it not only can destroy a child's teeth; it can have a debilitating impact on his or her health and quality of life.
Many have heard me speak before about the tragic loss of Deamonte Driver, a 12-year-old Prince George's County resident, in 2007. Deamonte's death was particularly heartbreaking because it was entirely preventable. What started out as a toothache turned into a severe brain infection that could have been prevented by an $80 extraction. After multiple surgeries and a lengthy hospital stay, sadly, Deamonte passed away--twelve years ago this month.
Even in less tragic cases, tooth and gum pain can impede a child's healthy development, including the ability to learn, play, and eat nutritious foods. Recent studies have shown that children with poor oral health are nearly three times more likely to miss school due to dental pain, and children reporting recent toothaches are four times more likely to have a lower grade point average than their peers without dental pain.
Tooth decay and oral health problems also disproportionately affect children from low-income families and minority communities. According to the National Institutes of Health, approximately 80 percent of childhood dental disease is concentrated in 25 percent of the population. These children and families often face inordinately high barriers to receiving essential oral health care and, simply put, the consequences can be devastating.
In 2009, Congress reauthorized the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) with an important addition: a guaranteed pediatric dental benefit. Today, CHIP provides affordable comprehensive health coverage--including dental coverage--to more than 8 million children. Thanks to CHIP, we now have the highest number of children with medical and dental coverage in history. In addition, in 2010, Congress included pediatric dental services in the set of essential health benefits established under the Affordable Care Act.
I am very proud that my State of Maryland has been recognized as a national leader in pediatric dental health coverage. In a 2011 Pew Center report, ``The State of Children's Dental Health,'' Maryland earned an ``A'' and was the only State to meet seven of eight policy benchmarks for addressing children's dental health needs. In addition, in the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange, every qualified health plan now includes pediatric dental coverage, so families do not have to pay a separate premium for dental coverage for their children and do not have a separate deductible or out-of-pocket limit for pediatric dental services. I am pleased to say that our actions have been working, and our numbers are improving. In 2004, nearly 23 percent of all children had untreated tooth decay. In 2016, that number dropped down to 13 percent.
I urge my colleagues to join Senator Wicker and me in supporting the Dental Loan Repayment Assistance Act to help address our critical nationwide shortage of dental healthcare providers and especially dental faculty. We will not continue to allow crippling graduate student debt to deprive the American people of the teachers and mentors we need to train the next generation of oral healthcare providers.
