Real Dental Costs Data Brief: The Dental Data Podcast
The Real Dental Costs Data Brief is a short audio series from our Data & Research Team. Each episode takes one dataset, states what it measures, what it does not measure and where every number came from. Episode one covers the State Medicaid Dental Fee Index 2026. Pricing and market research, not medical or insurance advice.
Latest episode
Episode One: What Medicaid Pays Dentists for a Crown, State by State
Published September 17, 2026
The State Medicaid Dental Fee Index 2026 compiles state Medicaid dental fee-for-service schedules for all states and the District of Columbia. Episode One covers what a state pays a dentist for a porcelain or ceramic crown (D2740), a molar root canal (D3330), a complete upper denture (D5110) and a core buildup (D2950), why the spread between the highest and lowest schedule is so wide, and where the data stops being comparable. These are program rates paid to providers, not patient prices. Data and chart: realdentalcosts.com/en/medicaid-dental-fee-index-2026/ (CC BY 4.0).
Episodes
- Episode One: What Medicaid Pays Dentists for a Crown, State by State (September 17, 2026): transcript, sources and the interactive fee table. MP3.
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The show is self-hosted. Paste the feed URL into any podcast app, or open it directly:
- RSS feed: https://realdentalcosts.com/podcast/feed.xml
- Host: Real Dental Costs (no third-party hosting platform, no tracking prefix on the audio URL)
- Contact for the show and the data: research@realdentalcosts.com
How each episode is built
Every spoken figure is mapped to a field in the published dataset behind the episode before the audio is produced, and the same figures appear in the written transcript with a link to the source table. We read the data we publish; we do not interpret it clinically. Our sources and editorial process are documented in our methodology, and reuse terms are on cite this data. Corrections: data corrections.
Independent dental pricing research — every series carries a named source, and corrections are logged publicly. Not medical advice.
Disclaimer. This podcast is pricing and market research, not medical or insurance advice. Amounts discussed are program or market rates from named source documents, not quotes for any patient. Confirm coverage and rates with your state Medicaid program or dental plan.