Medicaid and Dental Care

Dental care for Medicaid patients is expanding, but a study says that won’t reduce ER visits, By Robert Gebeloff, August 6, 2015, Washington Post: “A lack of dental care for low-income Americans has long put stress on hospital emergency rooms, a new study has found, bring hundreds of thousands of patients in to ERs for minor dental problems. The study, published this week in Health Affairs, found that in 2010, somewhere around 2 percent of all ER visits was dedicated to avoidable these patients, posing questions about how best to deliver dental care to poor people. Authors of the study argue, however, that an expansion of dental care under Medicaid alone won’t fix the problem. Patients relying on the federal program would still face limited access to dentists who are willing to take them…”