No dental insurance? No problem

David Denney, Star Tribune

Dr. Kathleen Swanson talks with 10-year-old Heng Po's mother Aun Hour, at left. At right is dental internist Jenny Overaas.

Dentists and hygienists around Minnesota are giving free care to thousands of kids who don't have insurance.

By JOY PETERSEN, Star Tribune

Last update: February 6, 2009 - 8:15 PM

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Lower Income Adults DO Need Help!

Be careful before you spout off about that which you do not know about! Lower income adults and disabled adults who are on Medicare can not … read more afford to go to the dentist! I know this for a fact as I have watched my Aunt who is only 48 yrs old suffer from horrible dental trouble. And she doesn't even drink soda pop! She had only dental insurance from the State MA program and guess what - Virtually No Dentists could or would get her in! And the cap on what they are allowed to spend is ridiculous! Dentists are filled to capacity with MA cases IF they even take MA and then the procedures and materials they are allowed to use are inferior. By the time my Aunt could get in - one of my Aunt's teeth had to be root canaled and MA will only pay for what any other dentist would consider a "temporary crown!" And then as my Aunt had had to WAIT so long to get into any place except this cut rate clinic I won't name - her whole mouth down into her jaw became infected even after the root canal and she had to have most of her teeth removed - but yeah the State will pay for extraction! Now she is left with a mouth that has slightly less than half of her teeth and she can not eat properly which is not good for her health! My Aunt is a responsible good person who worked all her life and became disabled thru no fault of her own and now is left to swing in the wind because no one thinks of the elderly, the disabled or the lower income adults when they make these damn programs up! She has always gone to the Dentist when she needed to and because of someone's lack of foresight when they wrote these programs she was unable to get the care she needed! Thankfully thru much research and a whole lot of perseverance we found a program that is PRIVATELY run and my Aunt is getting her mouth fixed by a very generous dentist! But for the last 3 years she has battled every system out there just trying to get help and NONE was available because she was an adult and because the way the lawmakers wrote these programs the treatments that were allowed and the materials that were used only served to screw up her mouth worse combined with the huge amount of time she was forced to wait. By the time she had her teeth removed she was so ill and her jaw so infected that only an Oral Surgeon could care for her and she was on massive amounts of antibiotics and at one point so sick I was afraid she was going to be hospitalized and die! So I say - YES to the Kids programs BUT it's time to look at being able to adequately care for our elderly, disabled and very low income in a proper manner otherwise you just end up with Emergency and Out of Control Situations that are 2 or 3 or 4 times more expensive to fix! If the situation can be fixed at all!

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Four-year-old Avril Garcia played in the waiting room of a dental clinic she'd never visited before Friday as her parents waited for a volunteer to call her name.

Avril's father, Willy Garcia, said he had heard from his daughter's school about a program that provided free dental care for uninsured kids.

"Two years ago I had to cancel my insurance because of the economy," said Garcia, of Brooklyn Park. "This is why we came."

The program, called "Give Kids a Smile," is sponsored by the American Dental Association. Dentists and dental hygienists across the country volunteered their time Friday and again today to treat uninsured children. The Minnesota Dental Association expected nearly 5,000 children to get free treatment across the state. Parents arranged appointments by calling a help line set up by the United Way or by contacting clinics directly.

Some clinics saw signs of rising need this year. A private practice in Edina, Edina 5-0 Dental, has participated in the program for three years, and in the past, appointments filled up over the course of a week, office administrator Joyce McClain said. This year, the office filled its calendar with 22 appointments in three days.

Jenni Hegge, coordinator of the event at Children's Dental Services in Minneapolis, where the Garcias had an appointment, said the event is a "fantastic thing," but "it's not enough."

At Children's Dental Services, patients don't leave without being given an opportunity to apply for state- or county-assisted dental insurance. Because of success in signing up families during past clinics, Children's Dental Services rarely has a young patient come back for the free clinic the next year, Hegge said.

Most of the young patients got a cleaning and a checkup. But some who had more severe problems had an additional appointment scheduled in the afternoon.

Kelly Stein, a dental hygienist with Artisan Family Dentistry in Plymouth, said she usually has Fridays off, but on Friday she volunteered at Children's Dental Services, giving oral exams, X-rays, bite-wings and fluoride treatments.

While she has participated in other events where dental education was made available to underserved groups, Stein said it has never been "as hands-on as this."

"This is a great way to do something to help out."

Joy Petersen is a University of Minnesota journalism student on assignment for the Star Tribune.

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