More of State’s Poor Will Get Dental Care in Settlement

Settling an unprecedented lawsuit aimed at improving dental care for the poor, state health officials said Friday they have agreed to set aside enough money for yearly dental visits for an additional 750,000 to 1 million people insured by the Medi-Cal program.

The settlement, which must be approved by a federal magistrate, concludes a four-year, class-action lawsuit aimed at making dental care as accessible for Medi-Cal patients as it is for the population at large.

Public-interest attorneys say that only 30% of the 4.5 million Medi-Cal recipients get annual dental checkups, compared to 57% of the population as a whole, and 67% of those who have private dental insurance.

The settlement requires state health officials to boost reimbursement rates to dentists to encourage them to treat more Medi-Cal patients. In areas where there are not enough dentists, the state will set up independent dental clinics for the poor. Also, a mechanism will be set up to review the quality of dental care provided, attorneys said.

Robert Newman, an attorney for the Western Center on Law and Poverty, said that the state has agreed to increase the percentage of Medi-Cal patients receiving yearly dental care from 30% to 50%, affecting between 750,000 and 1 million people a year.

John Rodriguez, chief deputy for the state Department of Health Services, said the cost of providing this additional care is “potentially open-ended. . . . We will pay whatever it ends up costing to take care of these additional people.”

The settlement follows a ruling by U. S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton, who found that Medi-Cal’s low payments and cumbersome procedures denied recipients access to the dental care they were entitled to under federal law.

The settlement was hailed as a victory by public-interest lawyers around the state who had filed the case in November, 1987.

“Our point is not to make dentists rich . . . but to pay them enough money to at least cover their costs so they will agree to take Medi-Cal patients, so they (dentists) won’t lose money every time a Medi-Cal patient sits in a chair,” said Eugenie Mitchell, attorney for Legal Services of Northern California.

The dental settlement follows settlement of another issue in the same lawsuit--access to maternity care.

That issue was settled when the state agreed to double payments to physicians for maternity care for Medi-Cal recipients.