Friday my husband took Matthew, 24, who has Down Syndrome over an hour away out of the county to the only dental place who would knock him out, pull two teeth and fix 7 others.
He did fine, but man, it sucks to have to pay that much. I can think of TONS of things that we could have used that money for.
The problem is that while medicaid for kids has a wonderful dental program that fixes everything for no cost, the adult medicaid has a dental plan that will pull out tooth a year and fill one tooth with a silver filling only per year.
Dentists don't use silver anymore. We bought a dental discount card, but it only would have been of value if Matt could hold still for having two molars extracted and the other 7 drilled and filled.
Wasn't gonna happen. So we took all of the $2250 that we got through the government's economic recovery payment to people on SSI, and $850 of our own cash and had his work down in the next county.
Now I'm glad he got his teeth fixed. But I'm angry that adults with developmental disabilities who don't qualify for private insurance have to go without dental care. So many of the people who work alongside Matt and Jennifer at the Hab Center have missing teeth. I mean, if medicaid can do it for kids with disabilities, why can't they also do it for adults with disabilities?
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