Please Get Educated about the 2010 Healthcare Act

A decent summary of the Affordable Healthcare Act (ACA) as it impacts dental patient care was released recently.

The ACA has inadvertently developed many complicated twists and turns for patients and providers on the long road to a successful, comprehensive care horizon.

My thoughts:

1) Dentistry isn't about to get cheaper or easier to access with the advent of the ACA activity.

2) Maintain great communication with your employers and human resources representatives. Do your best to communicate the continued need for dental insurance policies.

3) Consider a health savings account or a flexible spending account and talk with your employer or HR about matching or funding those accounts for dental care. These types of accounts allow flexibility in how and where you get care. They can also help you and your family break through dental insurance limitations for where, when, and how you get care.

4) Educate yourself on how you can keep your children healthy under the ACA provisions. Odds are there is a state-funded program for kids in need, wherever you may live.

5) The ACA will create better access to medical insurance for our country's patients. Keep in mind surgical care in a dental office (tooth extractions, periodontal surgery, grafting, dental implants) and treatment for sleep apnea in a dental office can be submitted to medical insurance.

Improve Our Care, Not Our Workforce

Danny Warner, DDS, is the new president of the Washington State Dental Association.  He recently released an op-ed piece in the Seattle Times. It discusses how dentists, lawmakers, and the public should be thoughtful and cautious about creating a new dental therapist role in Washington.  We have some effective programs in place for helping our state's most at-risk patients--those being children--with dental disease. And if the current population of dental patients worked more consistently to prevent their dental troubles (see my post), this topic of adding dental therapists to the workforce would likely be swept off the lawmakers' tables. I wrote about this issue a few months ago.  I feel the position Dr. Warner takes is sound and reasonable.