For the sake of my pearly whites, I hope this over­haul works out

I should con­sider myself lucky to have health insur­ance, but I can­not help but notice how flawed my pro­gram really is.

I am refer­ring to the well-known social insur­ance pro­gram known as Medicaid, which has been my pri­mary health care provider for a long while. Right now, I have Health Plan of Michigan, which many doc­tors’ offices are no longer accept­ing. Now, it is even more dif­fi­cult to find a “decent” doc­tor, den­tist or counselor.

According to an an arti­cle from med​ical​new​sto​day​.com pub­lished on July 23, 2007 from the “Wall Street Journal”, a grow­ing num­ber of physi­cians are no longer accept­ing new Medicaid ben­e­fi­cia­ries because of fed­eral pay­ment cuts and ris­ing health costs. Although this arti­cle was pub­lished over two years ago, the con­cept remains the same: fewer physi­cians are accept­ing Medicaid.

A more recent arti­cle, “Medicaid Expansion Would Guarantee Coverage, Not Care”, pub­lished on wash​ing​tonin​de​pent​.com on Sept. 22, 2009, and stated that about 40 per­cent of physi­cians do not accept new Medicaid patients.

The arti­cle con­tin­ued to explain that while the Democrats want to expand Medicaid eli­gi­bil­ity, how ben­e­fi­cial would it be if a major­ity of health care providers refuse it?

Although a good num­ber of den­tists do not accept Medicaid, I recently was able to come across one who did. I made an appoint­ment to visit this den­tal prac­tice to see if they were able to con­duct some spe­cific den­tal work. Because of my insur­ance, the den­tist explained he could only pull out my teeth, not fix them.

Needless to say, I did not return to that den­tist for a sec­ond visit. I refuse to have my gen­er­ally healthy teeth yanked out of my mouth because of the lack of cov­er­age pro­vided by my health insurance.

I sup­pose that explains the results of a 2007 sur­vey by the American Dental Association that stated fewer than 27 per­cent of respon­dents treated Medicaid-insured patients.

Because I am an inde­pen­dent col­lege stu­dent, Medicaid is the only health insur­ance pro­gram I am eli­gi­ble for.

The low rates in pay­ment of Medicaid must cer­tainly con­tribute to health care providers’ refusal of accept­ing the social insur­ance pro­gram. That makes it all the more dif­fi­cult for cit­i­zens with Medicaid to find decent health care providers for their med­ical, den­tal and emo­tional wellbeing.

I recently learned that one of my health care providers was no longer accept­ing Medicaid and I was def­i­nitely less than thrilled about the news. For my next and most likely final appoint­ment, I will be pay­ing out of pocket. Unfortunately, I can­not afford to pay out of pocket for every appoint­ment at this point in my life.

My hope is the health care reform bill will aid in pro­vid­ing cit­i­zens with a more effi­cient form of health insur­ance, or improve the Medicaid sys­tem alto­gether. In addi­tion, it would be appre­ci­ated, by myself and oth­ers in my sit­u­a­tion, if more health care prac­ti­tion­ers began accept­ing Medicaid in the near future.

I can­not wait until the day I get a decent job that will offer decent health insur­ance with reli­able cov­er­age. Until that time how­ever, I will have to rely on Medicaid. I can only hope that the health care reform is suc­cess­ful and that Medicaid will improve dras­ti­cally or a bet­ter option will become avail­able. I am much too young for dentures.