- For those on Medicaid, it can be a struggle to find dental care in the Twin Ports, By Brady Slater, March 3, 2018, Duluth News Tribune: “Zymrie Bekteshi is doing the best she can in the world. She’s a single mother raising a boy and girl, both under the age of 10. She sews for a local company serving the aviation industry. Her employer lets her work from home. ‘Work from home is good,’ she said. ‘I have nobody to help me, no family if kids get sick. So they give me a machine to work with in my home.’ Even with the job she’s held for 11 years, she described herself as ‘low-income.’ Not long ago, Bekteshi, of Duluth, experienced one of the risks concomitant with living near the poverty line: trouble finding a dentist for her kids…”
- Wisconsin pilot program aims to increase access to dental care for low-income children, By Shamane Mills, February 26, 2018, Wisconsin Public Radio: “Dental care for low-income children has been a problem in Wisconsin for years. One reason is that parents can’t find dentists who will accept Medicaid, known in Wisconsin as BadgerCare. To help address this gap, the state is paying some dentists who take Medicaid patients more to see if it will improve access to care. The Enhanced Dental Reimbursement Pilot Program began in October 2016 and includes Brown, Marathon, Racine and Polk counties…”
- Dentists ask for more funding for treating patients with Medicaid, By Shamane Mills, February 27, 2018, Wisconsin Public Radio: “Medicaid is one of the biggest cost drivers in the state budget, but dentists say they’re getting less than 1 percent of that money. They’re asking the state to pay them more for taking on patients who get insurance through Medicaid. In an attempt to address the gap in dental care for low-income children across Wisconsin, the state began a pilot program that does just that…”
- Dentists: Slights in funding, respect at the root of Wisconsin’s dental care disparity, By Shamane Mills, February 27, 2018, Wisconsin Public Radio: “Dentists will tell you they deal with a lot of neglect. They often see patients who put off flossing or brushing, or let cavities sit unfilled. And like a tooth problem that gets ignored for too long, some Wisconsin dentists say state officials neglect their sector of care, slighting the industry with what they consider inadequate state funding which ultimately makes it harder for their patients to get treatment…”
Tag: Low-income families
Basic Income Program – Ontario, CA
Canadian province experiments with ‘basic income’ payments to low-income people, By Rob Gillies (AP), November 29, 2017, Portland Press Herald: “Former security guard Tim Button considers how a sudden increase in his income from an unusual social experiment has changed his life in this Canadian industrial city along the shore of Lake Ontario. Sipping coffee in a Tim Horton’s doughnut shop, Button says he has been unable to work because of a fall from a roof, and the financial boost from Ontario Province’s new ‘basic income’ program has enabled him to make plans to visit distant family for Christmas for the first time in years. It has also prompted him to eat healthier, schedule a long-postponed trip to the dentist and mull taking a course to help him get back to work…”
Public Universities and Low-Income Student Enrollment
Top public universities are shutting out poor students, report says, By Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, October 26, 2017, Washington Post: “Graduating from a selective college can help low-income students climb the economic ladder, but many of the nation’s top public universities are turning their backs on the group. Since the late 1990s, almost two-thirds of selective public universities have reduced the share of students they enroll who come from families earning less than $37,000 a year, according to a report released Thursday by New America. Policy analysts at the think tank found that a near-identical share of these schools have increased the percentage of students they enroll who come from families earning at least $110,000…”