Please tell us how you, your family or your community has benefited from Medicaid coverage for dental care, vision care, and transportation assistance: Dental care in Kentucky is already one of the lowest in the country. If this coverage is taken from Medicaid recipients we will decline even more. It’s already bad enough that many adults with Medicaid don’t even know they had the coverage, I didn’t until my PCP told me. It’s widely thought dental and vision is for children only.

Please tell us how eliminating these benefits would affect you, your family, or your community: For myself, I need at least four teeth worked on because of vitamin deficiencies and poor preventative care. (I didn’t know I had dental coverage for a long time) I already have to pay out of pocket for the crowns, at over $400 a piece. Because of my families budget issues I will have to have the 4 extracted and a partial plate made. Even with me paying out of pocket for the partial plate, around $500 to cover all missing teeth, it’s more economical than the crowns. If I loose the coverage I do have I guess I will have to walk around with the front of my mouth rotted out because I do not have the money to pay for the needed work out of pocket. And with tooth decay comes even more medical issues that my Medicaid will have to pay to correct.