Dental clinic reveals need in Los Angeles area while North Carolina County may cut dental care for many Medicaid patients

The Los Angeles Times: "More than 100 who had waited for care were asked to return next week for services. In all, volunteers saw 1,157 patients, 64 of them minors. Overwhelmed by demand for dental services, organizers of a massive free mobile health clinic asked some patients who had Tuesday appointments to return next week, a hitch in an otherwise smooth first day at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. The need for dental work was nearly double what organizers saw on the first day of a similar free clinic held in August, said Roger Fieldman, a dentist who serves as volunteer dental director. Much of the increased demand was tied to the state's elimination of adult Denti-Cal last summer, Fieldman said. The cut, made because of the state's budget crisis, left about 3 million people without dental insurance" (Hennessy-Fiske, 4/28). 

Richmond County Daily Journal: "Some Medicaid patients may soon feel the pain of cutbacks in Raleigh. Under the proposed spending plan, adult Medicaid patients would lose their coverage for most dental procedures. According to the Richmond County Department of Social Services, about a quarter of Richmond County's population are on the Medicaid rolls. ... 'Basically, they wouldn't be covered unless they needed a tooth pulled or something like that' [County Health Directory Dr. Tomm] Jarrell said (Brown, 4/27).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.