Romney restores dental benefits to women in MassHealth
Faced with a class-action lawsuit, the Romney administration has agreed to restore dental benefits to pregnant women and certain mothers who receive health coverage from MassHealth, the state's Medicaid program.
The decision means that 35,000 to 45,000 women across the state who are pregnant or have children under 3 will be able to get routine dental care starting Jan. 15. Those benefits were cut in 2002 as the state struggled through a fiscal crisis.
The Legislature, in an acknowledgment that the state economy had improved, restored funding for the program in the budget for this fiscal year, which began July 1. But the state Executive Office of Health and Human Services has yet to extend the benefits to the Medicaid recipients, prompting two Boston nonprofit legal organizations to file a lawsuit against the state last week.
On Friday, prior to a court hearing in Suffolk Superior Court, the state agreed to provide the care by next month.
''My reaction is, how sad that it took a lawsuit for them to do what they should have done," said Leslie Storm, senior staff attorney for Health Law Advocates, which filed the suit with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute.
Dick Powers, a spokesman for the Office of Health and Human Services, said the state has been working hard to implement the change since the passage of this year's budget.
The difficulty, Powers said, has been in identifying the women who qualify for the dental benefits, and figuring out how to get them on the program.
''It's always been our intention of following through on it, and we have been," he said.
Powers put the annual cost of the program at $13 million, half of which the federal government picks up.
The main plaintiff in the lawsuit was India Bulgar, a 28-year-old bus driver from New Bedford with four children and another on the way. Bulgar, according to an affidavit filed with the lawsuit, lacks dental benefits, has already had two teeth pulled, and has pain in two others.
Dental benefits for MassHealth recipients was one of several casualties of the budget crunch in 2002; for most recipients, the only thing the state has continued to pay for is emergency care.
But health advocates say that providing preventive care makes much more sense, particularly with pregnant women, in whom gum disease can lead to medical complications with their babies.
''It definitely was a thoughtful, cost-effective, sensible thing for the Legislature to do," Vicky Pulos, a health law attorney with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, said of the restoration of funding this year.
The lawsuit came after months of communication between the nonprofit legal groups and the state. At each turn, Storm said, the state's response was insufficient.
''Nothing happened," she said.
Pulos said she believes the suit added the necessary pressure.
But Powers said that the state was close to finalizing the program anyway, and may have had it ready in mid-January without the legal threat.
Scott Helman can be reached at shelman@globe.com. 