Ben Cardin

I was going to rebut Senator Wicker's comments, but I think I will allow the Secretary to testify.

The risk factors to our population and the cost factors to our population indicate that the Federal Government today is not carrying out its responsibility.

It is very appropriate that we have Secretary McIlwain here. Maryland has a very strong commitment to the environment.

We do believe we are good neighbors; we think we are good neighbors with Delaware and West Virginia.

The nitrogen levels in the Bay are critically important to achieving our goals.

Representing the State of Maryland, I am going to bring up the Chesapeake Bay.

Thank you again for holding a hearing on this critically important topic.

We urge you to prioritize a policy change to improve oral health in America: extending guaranteed, comprehensive dental coverage to all adults who rely on Medicaid for their health care.

Congress has both the power and the responsibility to enact policy changes that acknowledge the reality that good oral health is central to overall health and financial stability.

I hope we are able to continue this conversation in the coming months, as significant work remains to address oral health disparities.

ANCOR supports the Medicaid Dental Benefit Act of 2023, introduced by Chair Cardin.

The payment of services for the treatment of oral diseases by Medicare and Medicaid will also improve oral-health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) across the life spectrum for persons within this socioeconomic demographic.

We strongly believe that by improving oral health literacy, we further everyone's access to dental health care.

Oral health is integral to overall health and well-being.

We have, obviously, a very important agenda, and I hope that the subcommittee will be able to do some oversight as to some of the issues that are pretty pressing in our health-care system, during this Congress.

There is such an obvious way for us to provide a solution here if we just have the political will to get it done.

Senator Stabenow has been one of the great leaders on health care in the United States Senate.

Senator Daines, I want to thank you for your help and cooperation.

The Academy also strongly supports efforts that have been led by Chairman Cardin through S. 570, the Medicaid Dental Benefits Act of 2023.

I hope we will see the day that we can expand Medicare to include dental, and we were close, I thought, in the last Congress.

I have found that medical politics can be more brutal than politics in the Senate.

We do have some models out there that reward that type of reimbursement, but not enough.

Well, we are joined by the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. We have been talking about a lot of the progress that we have made, whether it was through the Affordable Care Act--which, by the way, provided substantial increase of…

This measure is necessary to ensure comprehensive dental care is covered under Medicaid regardless of what state a patient lives in.

Do we have a serious problem of dentistry not getting its fair allocations of surgical space within our hospitals?