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What Medicare Doesn't Cover: Dental, Vision, Hearing — and How Retirees Fill the Gap

Reading glasses resting on an open book, with a sticky note reading “Medicare: $0”.
Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash

Original Medicare will pay for a week in the hospital. A cleaning, though, gets nothing. Neither does a crown, a pair of glasses or a hearing aid. A root canal and a crown on two teeth can run something like $4,000 to $5,200 at one insurer's Orlando prices, and with Original Medicare alone, every dollar is yours. The options that fill the gap all have limits, and the limits are where the money goes.

Compare the 5 ways to cover the gap

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By Margaret Linwood · Updated Sep 29, 2026 · Reviewed against Medicare.gov, KFF, IRS

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The gap has been there from the start. When Medicare was created in 1965, routine dental, vision and hearing care didn't make it into the law, and Congress hasn't added them since. Medigap doesn't fill it, either: when Medicare pays nothing, a standard Medigap plan pays nothing too.

If you do have this coverage, odds are it came with a Medicare Advantage plan, and nearly all of them offer something now. The question is how much. A benefit that sounds generous can stop at a yearly cap well short of a big dental bill, and the plan can change that cap from one year to the next.

See lower-cost care that needs no insurance

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Cheaper care that doesn't depend on a policy

Sometimes the cheapest fix isn't coverage at all, just a different place to get the work done or a different way to pay for it.

  1. Dental schools. You're treated by students while licensed dentists check their work, and the bill often lands well under what a private office would charge (fair warning: appointments run long).
  2. Community health centers. Because these get federal money, what you pay depends on your income. A lot of them have dental clinics too, and you can look up the closest ones at findahealthcenter.hrsa.gov.
  3. Medicaid on top of Medicare. Some people with low incomes qualify for both, and then the state program may pick up some dental, vision or hearing care, though what adults get for dental swings a lot from state to state.
  4. The cash price. Plenty of dental offices discount payment in full or run their own membership plan, so it's worth asking before treatment starts.
  5. The medical expense deduction. Got a year with a really big dental bill? Itemizing might help. Only the medical and dental costs above 7.5% of your adjusted gross income are deductible, but dentures count, and so do eyeglasses and hearing aids.

If you'd rather have coverage, the article compares five common ways to get it, then walks through how to choose, starting with a written estimate from your dentist.

See how to choose, step by step

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