
Dental coverage for older and disabled people at stake in budget battle
CBSN
The mouths of tens of millions of Americans have a stake in the budget reconciliation debate now flaring on Capitol Hill.
A Democratic push to add dental, along with hearing and vision, coverage to Medicare for the first time is butting up against industry organizations like the American Dental Association, which argues that limited federal resources should be used to extend the benefit only to the poorest Americans.
"Currently about half of seniors don't have have dental coverage, and half of seniors don't use any dental services during the year," Thomas Rice, a professor of health policy and management at UCLA, told CBS MoneyWatch. "The main reason they don't is because of costs," added Rice, who termed the gap in oral care "a large public health issue."

In the past year, over 135 million passengers traveled to the U.S. from other countries. To infectious disease experts, that represents 135 million chances for an outbreak to begin. To identify and stop the next potential pandemic, government disease detectives have been discreetly searching for viral pathogens in wastewater from airplanes. Experts are worried that these efforts may not be enough.