Kids Getting Less Dental Care In Florida

Jeb Bush continues to think he has brilliant ideas. He is wrong and the people of Florida continue to suffer, as a result.

The number of poor kids getting dental care plummeted 40 percent in the first year of a Medicaid pilot project in Miami-Dade, according to a study released this month by the University of Florida.

The program was intended to improve about 200,000 children's access to dental care, reduce fraud and contain costs by moving them from standard fee-for-service to a health maintenance organization. The HMO is run by a Coral Gables firm, Atlantic Dental, and dentists are paid about $4.25 a month per child for all basic treatment.

The article stated that dentists were against the plan. Dentists told the state that most children would not get treated because the $4.25 a-month-payment was too low. I'm wondering how much state funding was put behind the program? With Jeb's reputation for social service programs, I say not much. Jeb wanted Medicaid to use "use time-honored market principles to drive better results." Which means this.

Republican Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, who was in Washington last week to talk about his state's Medicaid overhaul, agreed. "I've heard that somehow if there's reforms in Medicaid that all the states will race downward," he said. "The record shows the opposite. The record shows that by and large, particularly in good times, there has been an interest in expanding benefits or expanding beneficiaries in the Medicaid program."

On the other hand, Gov. Bush's program would actually cap Medicaid spending for some beneficiaries -- leaving it to health care providers to absorb the loss if patients need more care than the state is willing to pay for.

Jeb's World cuts state funding for Medicaid. Patients are then left to the mercy of HMO's. If the health insurance company refuses to pick up the cost that is just "time-honored market principles".