Connecticut Post

Cruel and unkind

Tuesday, February 24, 2004 - Gov. John G. Rowland may be too preoccupied with the federal and legislative probes facing him to pay much attention to the state budget.

What else would explain the governor's cruel budget recommendation to eliminate basic preventive dental care for poor adults and seniors on Medicaid, just to save $3.7 million to help balance budget adjustments he proposed to lawmakers earlier this month?

This is an unkind cut. The Assembly must waste little time consigning it to this session's scrap heap because in the long run if it's enacted it will cost poor people a lot of unnecessary pain and injury and it will cost taxpayers much more than what would be saved.

The Rowland proposal, which has come as an absolute shock to groups like the Connecticut Dental Association and the Connecticut Oral Health Initiative, would mean that state insurance would no longer pay for routine checkups, cleanings, fillings, crowns or root canals.

These are the most basic dental procedures that help people maintain oral health and help prevent more serious and costly dental problems.

Poor people and seniors on Medicaid already face a problem finding dentists willing to accept the state's present low reimbursement rate for such services. If the Rowland proposal is enacted, their only hope will be costly and already strained hospital emergency rooms.

As Robert Slate, executive director of the COHI, said recently, "Far too many Connecticut adults already can't sleep or eat properly, can't do their work, can't smile at a job interview, because they're suffering from untreated oral disease that could have been prevented and can easily be treated."

Why penalize even more residents?

Reprinted with permission of the Connecticut Post