At the Red Bird Mission dental clinic in Southeastern Kentucky, patients with few or no teeth now are eligible for dentures through an expansion of the state’s Medicaid dental services for adults.
“People are tickled to death,” said Dr. Bill Collins, the dentist at the United Methodist Church mission in a remote corner of Clay County. “We get patients who haven’t had teeth for 20 years.”
Dentures and other services newly covered by Medicaid have the potential to remake Kentucky’s image as a state of “toothless hillbillies,” said Collins, who has treated patients in the region for decades.
“I hate that image,” he said.
But a political fight in Frankfort over who has the power to enact the new benefits — that also expand vision and hearing services — could end the extra coverage advocates say is desperately needed.
Already the new benefits have started, stopped and started again amid a tussle between Republicans who control the General Assembly and Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat who enacted them Jan. 1.