What’s Causing OR Dentists to Drop State Insurance Customers?

On paper, state officials think it's easy. However, in real life, it is not.

Many OR providers won't take state insurance

According to a report from the Oregon Health Authority, between 55 and 70 percent of Oregon dentists don't like, and won't take Medicare or other forms of dental insurance offered through that state's Oregon Health Plan.

  According to Wweekly,  Many low-income clients cannot find a provider who will take the state insurance, so the OHA did a study to find out why.

The state says filing claims and working with the plan is "easy" but in practice it was anything but:

"The process to file Medicaid insurance claims was tedious. Coverage was insufficient for many common dental procedures, like wisdom teeth removals or dentures. And the state didn’t do a good job communicating what was covered and what wasn’t."

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Providers often found out procedures they were performing were not covered after they'd already begun the process or were finished.  Now, OHA says they're in the process of trying to fix these issues.

It's a problem similar to what's happening in WA state, where network difficulties and poor reimbursement rates are causing more medical facilities and Doctors to refuse state insurance and or Medicaid. It's just not worth losing money over.