The following editorial by the Everett Herald Editorial Board was published on Thursday, January 23, 2025.

Companion bills filed last week in the state Legislature aim to make dental bills and insurance coverage less of a pain than the average cavity filling.

Both bills — Senate Bill 5351 and House Bill 1535 — seek to bring to dental patients a standard of financial transparency and assurance similar to the federal Affordable Care Act, in effect, mandating that a certain percentage of what someone pays for their insurance is available for their dental care.

Both bills are promoted by the Washington State Dental Association, which represents more than 4,000 member dentists and advocates for patients’ oral health care.

The legislation, among other provisions, would mandate that insurance providers in the state — Delta Dental of Washington being the leading dental insurance provider — assure that a minimum of 85 percent of premiums that an insurer collects — called a “dental loss ratio” — would be spent on patient care, said Bracken Killpack, executive director for WSDA, leaving up to 15 percent for the insurer’s administrative costs, executive compensation and its charitable work.

Washington isn’t the only state looking at setting a floor for the percentage of premiums used for patient care. Massachusetts voters recently passed with 70 percent approval a similar law that also sets an 85 percent rate for dental care. Likewise, Killpack said, other states, blue and red, are considering similar legislation.

The intent is to provide dental patients with some transparency as to what they expect from their insurance provider, but also to keep some of the national market’s bad actors out of the state.

“The worst thing that could happen is to have someone put hard-earned money into what they think is dental care and have these plans that are not up to snuff and wonder where that money has gone to,” Killpack said.

Read the full Everett Herald editorial at HeraldNet.com.

READ THE FULL EDITORIAL