2025: The Year Dentists Started Taking Their Power Back
2025: The Year Dentists Started Taking Their Power Back
If it feels like the insurance tide is finally turning, you’re not imagining it.
This year alone, 37 new dental insurance reform laws passed across 18 states. And for once… the wins weren’t on the carrier’s side.
After years of dentists fighting back against restrictive reimbursements, buried fees, and endless credentialing hoops, 2025 marked something different: collective action, real advocacy, and measurable change.
The Big Wins You Might’ve Missed
Let’s start with North Dakota, where Senate Bill 2375 quietly reshaped the game.
The new law gives dental providers the right to jointly negotiate with insurers on non-fee related terms like credentialing, utilization management, and quality standards. In plain English, it means dentists can finally push back, together, when insurers create policies that complicate care or slow down approvals.
That’s huge. It’s a rare state-sanctioned moment of collaboration and a reminder that organized advocacy works when it’s strategic.
Meanwhile, over in Texas, the opposite almost happened. House Bill 335 tried to repeal equal pay protections for non-network dentists, a move that would’ve slashed reimbursements for out-of-network care and undercut patient choice. Thanks to strong advocacy from the Texas Dental Association, the bill was killed before it ever reached the floor.
A near miss, but a major win for both providers and patients.
And then there’s Washington, which doubled down on transparency with House Bill 5351. This bill tightens up dental loss ratio (DLR) reporting, the measure of how much of every insurance premium actually goes toward patient care versus admin overhead. Washington now requires insurers to report only in-state data, cutting out the national “averages” that used to water down accountability. The same law also tackled virtual credit card payments, giving dentists the right to opt in (not be defaulted in) and requiring full fee disclosure for every transaction.
Why These Laws Matter for Real Practices
These aren’t just legislative wins… they’re cultural ones.
For decades, dental insurance has operated like a one-way street: carriers make the rules, dentists comply, patients get confused. But with these new reforms, we’re seeing something different, a shift toward shared accountability.
Joint negotiation rights mean providers can finally influence the language in their contracts.
DLR requirements mean insurers have to prove your premiums are going toward actual care.
Virtual credit card laws mean you get paid without paying hidden fees.
And in Michigan, the ripple effects are getting real. Many offices, especially in rural areas, are being moved to the Premier fee schedule as networks thin out. That shift means higher reimbursements for some, and more freedom for practices not yet ready to go fully out-of-network.
Carriers are starting to feel the consequences of their own decisions as more practices walk away from unworkable contracts. We love that for them.
Each of these shifts chips away at the administrative chokehold that’s kept practices overworked and underpaid.
What This Means Inside Open Dental
Reform doesn’t automatically make your data clean or your workflows efficient… but it does make them more valuable.
If your Open Dental system is set up right, accurate fee schedules, correct carrier IDs, clean provider reporting, you can actually use these policy changes to your advantage.
Clean data is power, because you can’t fight what you can’t measure.
For example, with clean insurance builds, you can instantly see which PPOs are dragging your production down… and have real data when it’s time to renegotiate or drop a plan.
That’s where the real leverage happens, not just at the policy level, but inside your practice management reports.
The Bigger Picture: Advocacy Meets Systems
The American Dental Association and state societies are proving what’s possible when advocacy is organized and data-driven. North Dakota’s collective negotiation law didn’t pass because someone complained loudly… it passed because dentists backed it up with facts, coordination, and follow-through.
That’s the same formula we preach every day at SKF: when your systems are clean, your numbers tell the story, and your advocacy (whether to an insurer or your own team) gets a whole lot stronger.
Final Thought:
2025 might be the year legislation caught up to what dental teams have known all along - that transparency, fair pay, and autonomy aren’t luxuries… they’re necessities.
And while the ADA is fighting the battles on the front lines, SKF Practice Solutions helps you win the ones inside your own software.
If you’re ready to clean up your data, understand your insurance metrics, and finally feel in control of your numbers, start with a Comprehensive Software Exam.
Your future compliance (and sanity) will thank you.
