Babies for braces? News 8's Medicaid investigations continue | wfaa.com Dallas - Fort Worth

 

DALLAS - No one would say being a single mom is easy. Especially being a single, teenage mother.
But the State of Texas appears to be encouraging teenage girls to become pregnant so they can receive free dental care under Medicaid.

Our investigation last year found hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money spent for free braces on kids' teeth under Medicaid. That spurred a federal investigation, because cosmetic braces aren't supposed to be paid for under Medicaid.
If that is an example of good intentions gone bad, Latricia Banks and her mom, Patricia Jones, may exemplify a good idea gone terribly wrong.

For them, home is a tiny, wooden house in the shadow of Dallas' skyscrapers, which they share with Latricia's 82-year-old grandfather. It is a household held together with love, not money. Medical and dental care came mostly through Medicaid.
A little more than two years ago, Latricia's mom got a postcard in the mail, like many people in the neighborhood.  Access Dental was offering to provide free braces for qualified children like Latricia, then 17 years old.

Child in braces for 9 years!–More Texas Medicaid Fraud Exposed

by BYRON HARRIS

Bio | Email

WFAA

Posted on December 6, 2011 at 10:41 PM

DALLAS - When you don't have much money, and receive medical and dental care at state expense, it's rare to complain.

Texas received only 712 complaints from Medicaid patients in the last year. But sometimes the quality of care becomes so questionable, patients speak up.
The case of a Garland girl points to some weaknesses in Medicaid Orthodontics, a program that's paid out hundreds of millions of dollars to Texas dentists in the last three years.

You can actually watch Anntornett Taylor grow up through her dental records, in the still photos taken of her when she visited her orthodontist. Medicaid paid for her first set of braces when she was 12 years old. Now she is 21. She has had braces for nine years. And they are still on.

"It would be extremely unusual for a patient to be in braces for nine years," said Dr. Larry Tadlock, Associate Clinical Professor at Baylor College of Dentistry.
That fact is lost neither on Anntornett, or her mother. Her records show her treatment was to have been completed several times in the last six years - in 2006, in 2008, and 2010. But inexplicably to the Taylors, the braces have not been removed.

"Every time they told me they'd be through in a couple of months," Antornette said. "Then a couple of months come, we'll be through in a couple of months. There's always something."