Wisconsin ranked second place among U.S states, next to Florida, on poor record of dental care for low-income children.
The report was released by PEW Charitable Trusts published in June 23. The report was created to analyze if the strategies being used by different states in providing dental care to low-income children were effective.
The researchers found out that 71.5 percent of Medicaid-enrolled kids did not visit a dentist in 2011. In Florida, it reached 75 percent.
The health authorities were surprised when the report came out because they didn’t expect that they will end up on the upper quartile. "I knew access was bad across the country and figured Wisconsin would be in the bottom third, but I was a little surprised at the No. 2 ranking," said Matt Crespin, associate director of the Children's Health Alliance of Wisconsin, an affiliate of Children's Hospital of Wisconsin in an interview with Journal Sentinel.
According to PEW, the lack of access to dental care is evident as 14 million of low-income children are not able to visit a dentist every year. This is one of the common yet always disregarded problems in the U.s health care system.
Dental care is not just vanity because it affects the person’s entire health. Inflammation of the gums may be a warning sign that a person may have diabetes or poor sugar level control. Even maternal dental care was associated to low birth weight of babies.
Another issue that the researchers identified was that there were fewer dentists willing to involve themselves in state health programs because of low fees. In fact, the Wisconsin dentists are the fifth lowest paid in the country. The government launched BadgerCare Plus in the state in 2011 aiming to provide benefit health care plans to low-income children under the age of 19. Only those families within the 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Level can avail the benefit plans.
The Wisconsin health department is continuously making their efforts to address the issue despite their budget restrictions. They had allocated budgets to several clinics where low-income children can go for their dental care such as the Marquette Dental School that received a $53,361-budget this year to assist Milwaukee children. A total of $850,000 was distributed to nine clinics for this year, said state Department of Health Services spokeswoman Claire Smith to Journal Sentinel.
