Politics
Dental therapists provide much-needed access to dental care
Overwhelming evidence suggests that dental workforce reform to improve access in Florida is needed — and long overdue.
In fact, 65 of Florida’s 67 counties have documented dental health professional shortage areas, meaning nearly every county — in part or in whole — lacks enough dental professionals to serve its residents’ oral health needs.
More than 7.1 million Floridians, about one in three, now live in these areas with limited access to basic dental care, more than any other state and a sharp increase from five years ago.
Furthermore, Florida’s poorer, largely rural populations are more likely to be at risk due to access challenges. Policymakers can profoundly improve access by authorizing dental therapists to provide essential dental care services across the state.
Dental therapists are not new. As a matter of fact, they have been providing dental care for 100 years in more than 50 countries, in both public and private settings. They have been utilized for about 20 years in the U.S., where currently, fifteen states have authorized dental therapists to practice. Most published studies have found dental therapists expand access to safe, high-quality care.
Dental therapists would work under the supervision of Florida-licensed dentists to provide basic dental care that many Floridians can’t get today: exams, fillings, and simple extractions. They graduate from an American Dental Association (ADA) Commission on Dental Accreditation educational program and complete the exact same licensing exam as dentists for the procedures they perform.
The urgency for reform is reflected in hundreds of research papers and countless anecdotal personal stories proving that regular dental care improves overall health and quality of life.
For example, good dental health lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease, respiratory infections, diabetes, and birth complications, among many other harmful conditions. The ripple effect of poor oral health extends far beyond the health care system to impact workforce productivity, education, and economic disparities.
The single most impactful way legislators can improve access to dental care in Florida is to allow the market to determine the number and types of providers. Yet maximizing access requires ensuring Florida has enough dental providers and that the right types are well-distributed across the state.
Despite positive results associated with dental therapy, the primary opposition continues to be organized dentistry (namely the ADA), which lobbies with state partners to protect against unwanted competition. However, the fact remains the data just does not support the dentists’ expressed fears about patient safety.
Although dental therapists are not a silver bullet to end Florida’s oral health issues, they are a key part of the solution.
As has been the case with other areas of medicine expanding scope and access, such as with physician assistants, such a policy innovation would increase the number of qualified providers, improve the capacity of dentists currently practicing in the state, and encourage the development of new highly skilled health care workers.
On the patient side, more Floridians would have access to quality dental care, adults and children from poorer and rural communities would be far likelier to seek care before worse health challenges arise, and Florida could again serve as a model for other states seeking practical, market-based health policy reforms.
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Doug Wheeler is the Director of the George Gibbs Center for Economic Prosperity at The James Madison Institute (JMI), a free-market public policy research organization based in Florida.
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Sen. Nick DiCeglie wants Florida to follow President Donald Trump’s lead in renaming the Gulf of Mexico.
DiCeglie filed legislation (SB 608) that would change 92 statutory references in Florida law to refer to the body of water along Florida’s west coast as the Gulf of America.
The legislation would comply with Trump’s Executive Order 14172, called “Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness.”
Trump ordered the federal government to “take all appropriate actions to rename as the ‘Gulf of America’ the U.S. Continental Shelf area bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the State of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida and extending to the seaward boundary with Mexico and Cuba in the area formerly named as the Gulf of Mexico.”
DiCeglie’s bill references the President’s directive, which says the move recognizes the “importance of the body of water to the United States.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis already pushed the new name in an Executive Order (EO 25-13) as last month’s Winter storm approached the state.
The name change became official nationally on Monday and Trump declared Feb. 9 “Gulf of America Day.”
Google Maps this week also updated to reflect the name change for people using its product within the U.S. Users in Mexico will continue to see “Gulf of Mexico” displayed, while those everywhere else will see both names, with “Gulf of America” appearing in parentheses below “Gulf of Mexico.”
Google announced in late January that it would make the change the next time it updated its map, honoring a “longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources.”
Apple has not yet made a change to its maps.
Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum has previously quipped that, if the U.S. renames the Gulf of Mexico, she would begin referring to the U.S. as “Mexican America.” Internationally, other countries are not required to honor the name change, but it would create potential discrepancies that would need to be mediated by international organizations, according to USA Today.
Should DiCeglie’s bill pass, the changes to Florida statute would take effect July 1.
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