Low Income Massachusetts Residents Struggling To Access Dental Care
Low income residents from Massachusetts are struggling to access affordable dental care, it has been revealed.
Harriotte Hurie Ranvig is one of 80,000 low income residents who have first-hand experience of the difficulty of trying to find affordable dental care. Harriotte is blind and is covered by MassHealth. However, she stated that it is very difficult to find a dentist and also to get the treatment she needs because many treatments are not covered by MassHealth. Harriotte needed a new crown and root canal treatment, which were not covered by MassHealth and she was quoted more than $3,000 for the work.
As she did not have the money to pay for the treatment, she organised a payment plan with her usual dentist and it took her more than four years to pay the total cost.
Nancy Turnbull, a lecturer in health policy at the Harvard School for Public Health, said that some dentists have a different view when it comes to treating poor patients and the Medicaid programme is not financially rewarding for dentists, which puts many of them off. She was eager to stress that there are many dentists out there who do go out of the way to treat poorer patients, but the demand for affordable dental care is much higher than the supply.
Michael Wasserman, president of the Massachusetts Dental Society, said that dentists have costs to cover, including materials, rent and wages, and subsequently dentists have to make economic choices, which may not benefit poorer patients.
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