The story of Deamonte Driver could be one of parental neglect and child endangerment, but is being taken to indict Medicaid’s dental benefits. I’m okay with that, too. Medicaid and Health Choice expansions crowd out private coverage.
States are looking at their reimbursement rates for doctors as a way to increase access. But according to Slate, “In [a pilot program in] 2000, Michigan enrolled Medicaid children in an insurance plan also sold to private customers.”
How novel. Using the private sector to increase access to care. Meanwhile Michigan Medicaid dependents not included in the pilot program continued to have fewer dentists available.
The downside of using private coverage is that more people are willing to sign up for Medicaid and use it to get dental treatment, which makes the program more expensive. Providing private dental coverage to the poor also means they have better insurance than many with higher incomes.
Two lessons I take from this are 1) parents need to teach good hygiene to their children and 2) the touted savings for government health care — Medicaid, Medicare, or Obamacare — are an artifact of rationing.
