State officials in Texas are turning renewed attention to fraudulent billing for Medicaid-covered dental procedures, the Wall Street Journal reports today. Doctors across the state are alleged to have inflated their billing by, for example, performing unnecessary root canals and installing braces on children for purely cosmetic reasons. Such improper procedures are blamed for contributing to ballooning costs for the state insurance program; Texas spent $1.4 billion on dental procedures in 2012—a fourfold increase since 2006—and spends more on orthotic braces than the other forty-nine states combined.

Read the entire article, “Texas Drills Down on Medicaid Dental Fraud”