- Medi-Cal’s growing pains felt acutely by children, By Barbara Feder Ostrov, February 28, 2015, Santa Cruz Sentinel: “The massive expansion of Medi-Cal, the state’s health insurance program for low-income residents, was intended to bring relief to working-class families in need of care. But it was hard on families like Diana Vega’s. Vega, an elementary schoolteacher in San Pablo, appreciates the low premiums and that her three kids were able to keep the same pediatrician they had when they were under the now-defunct Healthy Families, another publicly funded insurance program. But Vega had trouble restoring therapy services for her son, diagnosed with autism and Prader-Willi syndrome, a genetic condition that weakens muscles. And she also was taken aback by how much more difficult it was to get eyeglasses and dental care…”
- Overdue for checkups: Denti-Cal program for low-income kids, Editorial, March 8, 2015, Los Angeles Times: “Fewer than half the low-income kids enrolled in California’s dental insurance program see a dentist in any given year. That seems like a problem. Whether it is, though, is impossible to tell because of the state’s inadequate oversight of the program, known as Denti-Cal. According to a recent audit, the state doesn’t collect the data necessary to determine whether the kids who need care can get it. The state should start measuring the performance of Denti-Cal as if it really cares how well it’s working…”
Tag: Dental care
Medicaid Patients and Access to Care
- Subsidized health centers welcome surge of Medicaid patients, By Kathleen O’Brien, February 16, 2015, Star-Ledger: “What comes to mind when you hear the term ‘clinic’? A storefront in the low-rent side of town, with plastic chairs in a crowded waiting room? A cramped examination room with just a curtain for privacy, where worried relatives hover in the hallway? That’s exactly what the old ‘Dover Community Clinic’ looked like a quarter-century ago when it was founded by a newly retired urologist who wanted to treat the poor. Now the Zufall Health Center occupies a renovated bank smack in the center of town, its three-story stone façade conveying solidity and permanence. It has a fancy new name – a Federally Qualified Health Center – and ‘clinic’ is a word consigned to its past…”
- Medicaid patients struggle to get dental care, By Phil Galewitz, February 15, 2015, USA Today: “When Pavel Poliakov’s clothing shop in this picturesque college town closed last year, he felt lucky to be able to sign up for Medicaid just as Colorado expanded the program under President Obama’s health law. But when Poliakov developed such a severe toothache that he couldn’t eat on one side of his mouth, he was unable to find a dentist -— even though Colorado had just extended dental benefits to adults on Medicaid. Eventually, he turned to a county taxpayer-supported clinic that holds a monthly lottery for new patients…”
Access to Dental Care
Access to dental care still a problem for low-income people in Wisconsin, By Guy Boulton, February 9, 2015, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “One day after Monica Hebl of Burleigh Dental in Milwaukee returned from a nine-day dental mission to Haiti last month, she saw a child with several serious infections who needed to have four teeth pulled. Some of child’s teeth were black. ‘I was just blown away,’ said Hebl, a former president of the Wisconsin Dental Association. The child’s dental condition was symptomatic of a problem that doesn’t seem to be getting much better: Scant progress has been made in improving access to dental care among low-income people in Wisconsin…”