The elimination beginning July 1 this year of adult Denti-Cal – the state of California’s dental insurance program for its poorest residents - will leave a painful cavity in California's health care safety net that could prove disastrous to fill later, according to advocates for the program. It will affect about as many as 3million statewide leaving them without dental benefits, according to figures provided by the California HealthCare Foundation.

For many of those people in Orange County dental implants and other treatments may have to be delayed because they cannot pay them. Eventually, though, the treatment they will require will be more complex and expensive. While the program elimination does not directly impact the more than 1million children receiving dental benefits, they too, will be affected as more dentists drop out and parents formerly in the program don't take their children to the dentist on a regular basis, a noted Orange County dentist says recently.

According to RecordNet, the Denti-Cal program elimination was triggered recently when California failed to qualify for the full $10billion federal stimulus package. When it came up short by close to $1.8 billion along with several Medi-Cal optional benefits including adult dental, chiropractic, incontinence creams and washes, acupuncture, audiology, optometry, podiatry, speech therapy, and services for veneers Orange County and other California state bodies watched helplessly as the governor and the Legislature cut the program.

When Maryland eliminated its adult dental benefits program in 1993, according to Castellano- Garcia, president and chief executive officer of the California Primary Care Association, emergency room visits for dental issues rose 21 percent in one year.And, she said, emergency rooms are generally ill-equipped to provide more than extractions, antibiotics and pain medication; for individuals needing to see a cosmetic dentist Orange County dental specialists emphasize the need for at a dental facility.

In some poorer, rural areas of California, the elimination of Denti-Cal payments will result in some of the state's 256 community dental clinics shutting down, Castellano-Garcia said.

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