Obamacare and Dental Care: An Example in Floyd County, Kentucky

With the rollout of Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act (ACA), there has been a lack of good information. We have decided to make this a priority within our website. Our intent is to provide truthful and timely information on how dental care is affected and impacted by Obamacare. In this, our fourth post on Obamacare, we are offering an example of how dental care has been impacted by Obamacare within Floyd County, Kentucky.
The Courier-Journal and USA Today teamed together to gather information for four days in March 2014, by interviewing healthcare leaders, patients, community officials, business owners, and other residents within Floyd County. This county is considered to be amongst the “most vulnerable communities” in America. We briefly offer to you the results of their investigative reporting.
Based on the research of the Courier-Journal and USA Today, which was reported on April 26, 2014, they found that only children are covered by Obamacare within the health care plans for dental services. They also found that the state medicaid plans do cover adults for dental services. While they report that more people do indeed have dental insurance coverage than in the past, there are still problems with Obamacare in how it assists patients with dental services. First of all, there is a shortage of dentists in their area. Secondly, the number of dentists accepting the state medicaid program for payment of services is declining. Thirdly, there are still some adult dental services that are not eligible for insurance payment; these ineligible services include dentures and root canal services, among others. Moreover, they found out through the investigation that the state medicaid managed-care organizations were “slow to reimburse”.
As time progresses it is hoped that some of these problems will become better solved. As time goes by it is hoped that more information will be available for patients, insurance companies, and dental offices. As these things occur and we find out, you can feel confident that we will report this progress right here within our web page. We thank you for your interest in our posts on Obamacare. Feel free to peruse our site for information on other subjects. Feel free to contact us for a consultation or an appointment at (972) 250-2580, or contact us in any other way you see available within this web page. Again, we thank you for your interest.