The Maine Dental Access Coalition has recently restructured itself to focus more on shaping policy and  legislation. Given the disastrous economic conditions facing states ( and everyone else)  we are looking  to see if there are rule changes within Medicaid that will allow us to extend Medicaid ( MaineCare here)  to pregnant women over age 21 ( they are covered up to that age).
 Have any of you been successful with this kind of approach and can you give us any suggestions about how to do it?
The other Medicaid issue is, of course, reimbursement rates for dental.  In states where there has been some success in raising rates, have you found a difference in increased access to dental providers by people on Medicaid?  We know that raising rates may be an essential, but not necessarily sufficient condition for increasing access. What else has worked, or not worked for you?  I am particularly interested in the perspective of those in community coalitions, there has been a fair amount written about this by Kaiser and the National Academy for State Health Policy ( I can share those if there is an interest) but I’m curious about the experience of those on the ground trying to find dentists for people.
Thanks  www.mainedentalaccess.org