That's Medic
AID. Big difference.
"Failure to properly fund Medicaid is the primary reason for the ADA's decision not to support this legislation. However the bill contains a number of other provisions that we have consistentlyopposed, including provisions to allow workforce pilot programs that may lead to non-dentists performing surgical dental procedures. Funding for these provisions would be better spent on increasing funding for Medicaid dental services."
So failure to fund adult medicaid benefits is the PRIMARY REASON the ADA isn't supporting this bill?
"We find it particularly disheartening that the Senate bill extends Medicaid eligibility to individuals in families with incomes up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level but does nothing to provide a basic adult dental benefit for existing or new Medicaid enrollees."
The bill for dues for the ADA are on my desk. I'm thinking about shredding it and saying goodbye.
So Dr. Tankersley, if adult Medicaid dental benefits were in the bill but midlevel providers were also still in it... that would've been OK? You would have supported it?
DrJeff... even you must notice the disparity in this letter!
Yup, and as I've said many, many, many times before, we as dentists need to stop just looking/micro-managing what is our small little world that exists inside of our own individual offices and start looking big picture, especially with respect to dentistry and politics both on a national and state level. Bottomline line (nationally) there's about 250,000 dentists (potential votes to a politician), there's about 300,000,000 millions americans (let's say 200,000,000 potential voters for arguements sake). Us just standing up and saying, "no, no, no" without having any factual data behind it/plans to attack what in the unrealistic mind of a dentally dumb legislator (one could easily argue just plain 'ol dumb
😉 ) won't work, and dentistry will be left out in the cold of the descision making process WHEN, not if some nationally scoped mid-level happens (remember, it's already inplace in a couple of states, so for many a dentally dumb congressional rep, that's all they need to know! Hopefully congress's dental knowledge will increase this fall as there's a dentist in Arizona who's running for congress this fall.
Secondly, even with good data showing what could work (or wouldn't) there's the emotional component of the debate. We in CT, just 2 days ago had a bill to create a DHAT-esque mid-level come out of committee, when the facts were against it, but one of the politicians on the committee told 2 blatant falsehoods about access to dental care for medicaid receiving kids in CT and the bill made it out of committee for consideration now by the CT state legislature. The bottomline, is that our dentally ignorant legislators have this grandiose ideas that 100% of the population should both have and
WANT access to dental care, when the reality is that the true UTILIZATION rates is under 75%.
The ADA, and Dr. Tankersley inculded, has this BIG PICTURE in mind (I had a 20+ direct conversation with Dr. Tankersley at a reception at the Yankee Dental Congress less than 2 months ago about this). The problem is that many a dentist doesn't want to see the big picture, and if we don't, then not only will we have some type of national mid-level provider, but dentistry will be locked out of the discussion of the scope of treatment, the educational requirements, the certification process, etc (See the Alaska mid-level debacle for an example).
Secondly, one of the things that the ADA is working on is showing that a mid-level, working to just help increase the access to care for the underserved is a financially non-self supporting model, and the better alternative is to encourage dentists (via medicaid fees increases) to see more medicaid patients where we have the ability to do more, and quicker and hence make more of a dent in the access to care issue.
With the current political climiate in this country where argueably our politicians are out of control and not listening to what the people want, now, more than ever is the time that we need to present a united front, based on facts, and not be in denial that nothing will happen just simply because "we're dentists and we know whats best"
