Medicaid Dental Coverage For Children The Focus Of House Subcommittee Hearing

The House Oversight and Government Reform Domestic Policy Subcommittee on Thursday held a hearing on Medicaid beneficiaries' access to dental care -- an issue that has attracted attention since the recent death of Deamonte Driver, a 12-year-old Maryland boy who had an untreated tooth infection that spread to his brain, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports (Eaton, Cleveland Plain Dealer, 5/3).

Laurie Norris, an attorney for Driver's family, said that the mother's Medicaid coverage had lapsed when the boy fell ill but that when she had Medicaid coverage it took seven months to obtain treatment for a different child with serious dental problems. Subcommittee Chair Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) said that United Healthcare, which covers Medicaid patients in Maryland, lists 24 dentists in the boy's area. However, phone calls Kucinich's staff made to those dentists found that 23 of the phone numbers are disconnected, incorrect or belong to dentists who do not accept Medicaid patients.

Kucinich said that government regulators who rely on private insurers to provide Medicaid data "would have believed that the number of dentists who could have served Deamonte was 24. But the real number is zero" (Otto, Washington Post, 5/3). Kucinich added, "This is not a case of an unfortunate boy falling through the cracks, since the majority of Medicaid-eligible children do not receive dental care. This is a system that puts profits before people" (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 5/3).

Peter Ashkenaz of United Healthcare in an interview said that the company lists 92 dentists in Driver's county who accept Medicaid, 78 of whom were reimbursed by United Healthcare for treating Medicaid patients in 2006. "I don't know where [Kucinich] is pulling that [information] from," he said (Washington Post, 5/3).


Government Accountability Office testimony from the hearing is available online. Note: You must have Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the report.

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