July 30, 2012|By Tim Darragh, The Morning Call
Medicaid cuts mean less dental care for poor
Allentown endodontist is driven to retirement as Pennsylvania eliminates root canal coverage through Medicaid.
Jerome Grossinger has closed his endodontistry practice (root canals)… (BEN MORRISON, THE MORNING…)
The phone is still ringing off the hook in Dr. Jerome Grossinger's quarters in an office building in Allentown's West End.
But his office isn't taking appointments.
The 77-year-old endodontist, a dentist who specializes in root canals, has relieved his patients' excruciating pain for the past 42 years, focusing in recent years on low-income and disabled people covered by Medicaid.
He is 77 for heavens sake!!! The way this story is presented you would think he was in his prime and had a wife and 4 little ones at home – two still in diapers.
But instead of treating the 15-20 new patients he'd typically see every week, Grossinger recently sat alone in his office and scanned years of patient records in bags, furniture stacked in the waiting room and the odds and ends of four decades of health care being readied for the Dumpster.
Grossinger is reluctantly calling it quits.
"I cannot believe this is happening to me," he said, recently. "I'm really in a daze about this."
Seriously!!!?? Look, Dr. Grossinger is probably a great guy and has had a thriving business for many many years, but to make him the example of Medicaid cuts??!!
