Reasons for Providers to Join the NEW HUSKY Dental Program
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Its Good Business
1. One in four of CT children is in the program.
2. One in three of CT pregnant women is in the program.
3. Rates are the highest amounts ever.
You'll be Helping Kids and Families that Really Need You
4. You'll be helping children who really need your help
5. Their families could not afford needed dental care without HUSKY. They need you.
The New Program makes Enrollment and Claims Processing Easier
6. No longer 'Managed Care'. On 7/1/08 all dental services will be 'carved out' and operate independently from the 'managed care'.
7. A single Administrative Service Organization
(ASO) instead of four Managed Care Organizations. The ASO will be paid
a fee and will not assume any cost risk. Credentialing and claims
payments will be managed by EDS.
8. Enrollment has been streamlined and is on-line. It only takes a half hour to complete.
9. Claim filing can be done on line and claim payment will be quick.
All Dental Professional Organizations Support Your Participation
10.
The new HUSKY Program is supported by the Connecticut State Dental
Association, the Connecticut Society of Pediatric Dentists, Connecticut
Oral Health Initiative, Connecticut Dental Hygienists Association,
Connecticut Dental Assistants Association and others. |
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Bridgeport plan restores funds
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By Bill Cummings
May 13, 2008
Mayor Bill Finch and city
council leaders on Monday agreed to restore funding for
libraries and
school nurses, and slightly reduce next year's anticipated tax increase.
. . .
The committee allocated $296,550 to
keep the school-based health clinics and dental hygiene programs
running for three months. Finch had proposed eliminating school clinics.
Hundreds of angry parents and children stormed council meetings over the last month to demand the services be restored.
. . .
Read the Full Story ...
Read the Follow-up Story ...
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| Settlement May Help Poor Get Dental Care
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By
Hillary
Waldman
May 16, 2008
For more than a decade, poor parents across Connecticut have complained
about frustrating searches for dentists willing to take their cases,
while their children cried in pain from rotten or broken teeth.
The problem became so severe that legal aid lawyers filed a
class-action lawsuit eight years ago, accusing the state of violating
the rights of 300,000 low-income residents who have been effectively
shut out of dentists' offices by stingy state Medicaid rates.
But lawyers hope that the doors to dental offices will soon begin to
open under the terms of a settlement that promises to dramatically
increase state payments to dentists and remove some of the red tape
that dentists say have made them reluctant to treat the poor.
Although the settlement is not scheduled to go to federal court for
final approval until August, state officials and advocates for the poor
said Thursday that many of the improvements mandated in the agreement
are already being implemented.
The agreement effectively won legislative endorsement last week when
the General Assembly's 2008 session adjourned without lawmakers turning
it back.
"I feel extremely optimistic," said Jamey Bell, the lawyer with Greater
Hartford Legal Aid Inc. who brought the suit in 2000. "I am really
gratified that we were able to come up with what I think will be a
tremendously improved system for families on Medicaid."
In the eight years that have passed since Bell filed the suit in U.S.
District Court in Hartford, access to dental care for low-income
families in Connecticut has gone from bad to worse. Of about 2,237 dentists practicing in the state, only about 100 - a
mere 4 percent - were available to treat large numbers of impoverished
families.
Meanwhile, public clinics have been overwhelmed with patients while
some school-based clinics that provided cleanings and check-ups were
forced to cut back because of rising costs and stagnant payments.
Bell said the logjam in the lawsuit was finally broken last year when
state lawmakers, moved by stories of children with painful toothaches
waiting for weeks or months to see a dentist, agreed to spend an extra
$20 million a year to boost Medicaid payments to dentists.
Once the money was there, Bell said, Gov. M. Jodi Rell's
administration was willing to work out other details aimed at opening
more clinics and private dental practices to low-income residents.
One cornerstone of the settlement is that it takes dental care out
from
under the umbrella of a managed-care system that in 1995 added strict
participation rules to already low rates and drove the few remaining
private practice dentists out of the Medicaid program. Under the
settlement, dentists will bill the state directly for the services they
provide. The settlement also provides higher payments to public dental
clinics
and awards $5 million in grants to bolster services at those clinics.
"The settlement provides a framework and the funding to begin a new era
of provision of quality dental care not only for 230,000 children
enrolled in Husky, but their parents and clients receiving dental
services through other [state] programs as well," said state Social
Services Commissioner Michael P. Starkowski in a letter to the
Connecticut State Dental Association. Connecticut's HUSKY program
provides medical coverage for uninsured children and teens.
. . .
Contact Hilary Waldman at hwaldman@courant.com.
Copyright © 2008, The Hartford Courant
Read the Full Story . . .
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Dental deception |
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It
sounds so wonderful: The Mission of Mercy. About 190 dentists
sacrificed a weekend last month to treat more than 1,000 people in what
the Connecticut State Dental Association billed as the state's first
large-scale free dental clinic. "For many individuals" - as many as 1.5
million in Connecticut by the association's estimate - "dental care is
a luxury that they cannot afford." The working poor, the elderly, the
disabled, or the uninsured "are often left without any dental care, and
face extreme pain, discomfort, and embarrassment."
No wonder the
Mission of Mercy left Senate President Pro Tempore Donald Williams,
D-Brooklyn, with the impression that when it comes to oral health,
Connecticut is a Third World country where desperate families must
brave "driving rain, lightning and long lines in the pre-dawn chill,"
as one media report put it, to get dental care. "If there is any doubt
in people's minds about the need for greater access to health care,"
the socialist senator said, "people should come here and see this."
But
just how bad is dental care in Connecticut? According to the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, we're No. 1 in per-capita dental
visits and teeth cleanings, and Connecticut senior citizens are No. 1
in retaining their teeth. The state is 16th in water fluoridation and
among the national leaders in dentist-patient and dental
hygienist-patient ratios.
So why all the doom and gloom?
Political symbiosis. Sen. Williams is quick to exploit the slightest
perceived misery to further his goal of socialized medicine, complete
with the right of "free" dental care. Meanwhile, the association,
noting "charity is not a health-care system," wants more generous
reimbursements for the Medicaid patients its members treat. So was the
goal of the Mission of Mercy about treating needy people or about
having the legislature build the association a sturdier depot for the
gravy train?
____________________________________
Steve Macoy, Editorial Page Editor
Mail: Letters to the Editor, Republican-American, 389 Meadow St., Waterbury 06722
Letters must be signed and include a phone number for confirmation. 250 word limit.
(203) 574-3636 ext. 1488 Fax: (203) 596-9277
smacoy@rep-am.com |
COHI Letter Response
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To the Editor:
What's next? Attacking motherhood and apple pie?
You would think that 190 dentists and hundreds of other people
volunteering to help more than 1,200 people desperate for dental care
would be a good thing. So why did the Republican-American, in a recent
editorial (Dental Deception' 5/5/08), not only attacked the event, but
also the Connecticut State Dental Association for organizing it?
While oral health in Connecticut is somewhat better than the national
average, as cited in the editorial, there are wide gaps in the system.
In Connecticut most impacted are the1.5 million residents without
dental insurance and the more than 400,000 poor on state-funded dental
insurance. Both have great difficulty getting dental care.
Of course there are those who received care at Mission of Mercy, and
the hundreds who were turned away when capacity was reached. As a
volunteer at the event, I did hundreds of exit interviews for "the
elderly, the disabled, or the uninsured," many in pain at the start and
all extremely grateful. One young woman I interviewed, who was
working two low-paid part-time jobs without insurance, was overwhelmed
with gratitude. Another, an older man, had been laid off five years
before, furiously wrote his appreciation out on a pad because his mouth
was full of blood-soaked gauze.
It's too bad that when presented with private-sector altruism, the
Republican-American uses it as a platform to rant about its political
views. Those of us who volunteered our time and the people we helped
deserve better.
Marty Milkovic, COHI Executive Director
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