Humanity 📍

Medicaid programs, which vary from state to state, are not required to cover dental care; several states do not. But under federal law, if a state Medicaid program does cover an optional category of care — such as dentistry, prescription drugs or optometry — it must cover all medically necessary care in that category.

The suit argued that dental health was essential not just to overall physical health but also to psychological well-being and the ability to find or keep a job.

“You need to have teeth to function in our society,” said Belkys Garcia, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society, which filed the suit. “It impacts everything in your life — your relationships, how people see themselves, how others see you.” Sign up for the New York Today Newsletter Each morning, get the latest on New York businesses, arts, sports, dining, style and more. Get it sent to your inbox.

For decades, Ms. Garcia said, New York’s coverage rules for Medicaid were “structured to pull your teeth rather than save them.” And because one of the main jobs of a tooth is to hold its neighbors in place, an extraction often has a domino effect: Losing teeth leads to losing more teeth.