Cheap Dental Care A Necessity for the Grand Canyon State

The cost of dental care is a significant problem for many people in Arizona. Cheap help for dental care is essential – if Arizonans cannot pay for the procedures they need, then they will simply have to deal with dental pain, which can be often unbearable.

Though oral issues may seem insignificant to some people, they can interfere with eating, sleeping, speaking, working, and even just enjoying life! Oral health is inseparably linked to overall well-being and happiness. Lack of attention to dental needs can have a substantial cost, both physically and monetarily. Finding a cheap dental care option, however, can ensure many Arizonans’ general happiness.

If oral hygiene has at all been lax, tooth decay will begin to set in – and the hope of cheap care appears to go out the window. Though tooth decay has declined in America as a whole over the last 30 years, it is still more common than almost any other disease in the world, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services. Arizona's situation is particularly concerning.

Cheap Dental Needed in Arizona

The Department reports that Arizonans have a higher rate of oral disease than the national average. This means Arizonans will spend more than the national average for dentistry – unless they have a great, inexpensive dental plan. The Department teamed up with the Office of Oral Health (OOH) for ten years to conduct a survey throughout the state of Arizona, focusing primarily on children.

The team gathered some discouraging statistics, finding that almost 39% of third-grade children in Arizona have untreated tooth decay. Almost 9% of Arizona’s children kindergarten through third grade have urgent dentistry needs. Nearly 31% of Arizona’s 8-year-olds have at least one sealant, but 81% need initial or additional sealants. Only 57% of children kindergarten through third grade in Arizona visited the dentist in the last year. These numbers, higher than the national average, demonstrate Arizona’s desperate need for cheap dental options.

The survey also reports that although many children are on some type of insurance that allows them to go to the dentist, oral health status still varies among them, highlighting the need for cheap care. Low-income children, Hispanic children and children of other racial minorities are reported to have the lowest oral status – this disparity must be corrected.

According to the survey, the Grand Canyon State falls far short of the health objectives of both Healthy Arizona 2010 and Healthy People 2010. These objectives state that a major barrier for patients to receive dental services is poor access to providers, since the majority of dentists practice in major communities like Phoenix and Tuscon.

Arizona also has a smaller dentist-to-patient ratio than other states. According to the Dept. of Health Services, the national average is one dentist for every 1,740 people, but Arizona has only one dentist for every 2,250 people. These statistics make cheap dental care seem even more of a necessity.

The Department also reports financial barriers to Arizonans obtaining dental care. More than 44% of adults and 38% of children in this state do not have insurance that assists with their dentist visits. With little access to cheap dental, some citizens opt to go the “no care” route and thus decline in oral health.

However, many cheap dental options exist in Arizona, such as discount plans. Often these plans are easy to find through a Google search. Cheap dental care opportunities should be made more visible to Arizonans so that the state can begin to curb its large number of instances of oral disease.