Schools in Boston having problems?

[pandaman]

---

Members do not see this ad.

I've always thought there are too many dental schools in Boston. Now I don't know how each dental school is affected by the Mass health cut. IF you are going to dental schools in Boston(Harvard, Boston U, Tufts), how's your patient pool?
thanks

 

[DrJeff]

One thing that you have to remember is that these budget cuts to state welfare programs do affect the reembursements that the schools receive for treatment of these patients. However, the currect soft economy has caused many private t companies to cut and/or eliminate their dental insurance programs and/or employees. This pool of new people that have had regular care in the past and are looking for continued care will often help fill in the voids that state budgetary cuts may have on patient pools. In Massechusetts especially now with Mit Romney as governor and how he likes to maximize captial expenditures, it wouldn't suprise me at all to see him try to link up the state of Mass and the Boston area schools to expand dental access for folks.

 

[groundhog]

We do discover that we are all linked together on occassion. In my area (Northwest Washington) health care professionals are being layed off (nurses ,PA's, and MD's) by some of the larger group practices because so many average Joe's/Jane's have lost their health care insurance along with their jobs and no longer seek health care services except for emergencies.

Then more and more folks in my area are combining healthcare with pleasure by vacationing in Mexico and Canada in order to also take advantage of huge discounts for routine medical and dental services. They buy inexpensive catastrophic health insurance in order to get the best possible care in the USA should a big problem arise and also set up tax exempt medical savings accounts to pay for the bargain basement routine services that can be obtained outside the USA.

I do wonder a bit about the benefits of the so called global economy. When local blue collar grunts loose their jobs because the mill moves its operations to India there is little anguish amongst the college educated Yuppies. But now economists are telling us that many of the information system industry jobs that the Yuppies perform will soon be easier to relocate to low wage countries than were the blue collar manufacturing jobs. Hold on tight. You or I may be next.

 

[Be'You]

We here at BU were affected by the masshealth cut last year only, but the adminstration had made an excellent program called "bump up". The way it works is that any masshealth patient who lost his benifits can pay 65$ to enroll into this special program and once his into the program every dental procedure becomes virtually cheap. for example, any crown for 90$ each. Any 3-units bridge for 285$ and RCT for 90$.
Still, that has not solved the problem but it made it much better than last year. We are still doing better than our friends at tufts and harvard where they should convince there patients to pay full price.