With demand high for dentures now that Kentucky’s Medicaid program has agreed to cover them for adults, Dr. Bill Collins, the dentist at Red Bird Mission dental clinic in Clay County, is providing them as fast as he can.
But the Medicaid reimbursement of $656 for dentures doesn’t cover the clinic’s base cost of $1,100, meaning the nonprofit clinic has to make up the difference from other sources, he said.
“We take Medicaid and try to help as many people as we can help,” Collins said.
Not all dental practices — many of them small businesses — can afford to do that, said Dr. Stephen Robertson, executive director of the Kentucky Dental Association.
“For an office to decide to participate in Medicaid, they have to agree to operate at a loss,” Robertson said.
Gov. Andy Beshear has tried to address the problem by directing Medicaid to pay for more adult dental services previously not covered by the federal-state plan. The future of that expansion, caught up in a partisan fight in Frankfort, is uncertain.
Source: Expansion might not be enough unless Medicaid pays Kentucky dentists more / The Sentinel Echo