On July 1, 2025, Delta Dental of Wisconsin (DDWI), the state’s dominant dental insurer, acquired Cherry Tree Dental, a private equity-backed dental practice chain and dental services organization. The deal marks the first time in Wisconsin history that a dental insurer has purchased a dental provider. It also offers a glimpse of where the dental healthcare market is headed if policymakers fail to prevent a Big Medicine takeover of dentistry.

Such mergers are not occurring in a vacuum—they follow a broader playbook that has already transformed large segments of the healthcare industry. For example, independent physician practices have been consolidated by hospitals and health systems, private-equity firms, and insurance conglomerates, reshaping care delivery around financial incentives. Dentistry is now seeing the same model applied at warp speed. The results elsewhere in healthcare are instructive: patients face higher and less predictable prices, providers are stretched thin with heavier workloads, independent practices are pushed out, and quality of care often declines as clinical judgment is subordinated to profit. If left unchecked, the same pattern is likely to take root in oral healthcare, with profound consequences for patients, providers, and competition.

For these reasons, state and federal policymakers must work together to protect patients and providers against the commodification of dentistry – and the perverse incentives that arise when the same entity operates on multiple sides of a healthcare transaction. Policymakers must work to close loopholes in existing laws intended to prohibit the corporate practice of medicine and strengthen antitrust enforcement to prevent further trends toward concentration.