Rep. Cummings Brings Together Insurance Company and Dental School

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August 8, 2007
Press Release
Washington, D.C. — startwidainctext Today, Congressman Elijah E. Cummings (MD-07) and Ms. Alyce Driver joined Dr. Norman Tinanoff, Chairman of the University of Maryland Dental School, and Dr. Allen Finkelstein, Chief Dental Officer of AmeriChoice, a UnitedHealth Group company, for the signing of an agreement between the Dental School and UnitedHealth that is intended to enhance pediatric dental services in Maryland as well as increase access to these services for children from low-income families.
 
The agreement is the first implementation of several recommendations made by Congressman Cummings to UnitedHealth Group following the tragic death of Ms. Driver's son, Deamonte, a young Maryland boy who died earlier this year after a tooth infection spread to his brain. Congressman Cummings has been actively working with UnitedHealth to enact multi-faceted solutions to the dental care crisis for children, including expanding the dental safety net to ensure that every child has a dental home.
 
"The lack of access to dental care among children that led to Deamonte's death cannot be solved with any one action," Congressman Cummings said. "I have made it my personal mission, however, to tackle this problem on multiple fronts to ensure that we do everything necessary to produce a solution. That means working in Congress, working with the state legislature, working with government agencies, working with parents, and working with private health companies."
 
According to the agreement signed today, AmeriChoice will provide the Dental School with more than $170,000 annually to enact new services and programs designed to reduce barriers keeping children from receiving dental care; specifically, the agreement will address the shortage of pediatric dentists and help patients more easily gain access to dentists who are covered by Medicaid. A majority of these funds will be used to:
  • Conduct Mini-Pediatric Dentistry residency programs for ten general practitioners seeking to gain advanced skills in Pediatric Dentistry.
  • Hire a Pediatric Dental Fellow who will provide dental care to underserved and handicapped children on a full-time basis.
  • Hire a Pediatric Dentistry Case Manager to provide on-site case management services for Medicaid patients to help reduce barriers for appointment-keeping.
  • Provide a continuing education program provided for Pediatric and Family Medicine Residents
"While Deamonte's death was tragic, it does not have to be in vain. We must all come together to ensure that life comes from this death," Congressman Cummings said. "Today we have reached another great milestone in achieving that goal, and I hope that this agreement will serve as a model to be followed around the country."
 
In addition to facilitating discussions between UnitedHealth and the University of Maryland Dental School, Congressman Cummings also led his colleagues in Congress to include provisions in the recently passed Children's Health and Medicare Protection Act (CHAMP Act) that would provide dental care for 11 million low-income children receiving health coverage through the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). President Bush has been vocal in his threats to veto this legislation; if CHIP is not re-authorized, 6 million children, including 136,000 in Maryland, would lose their health coverage.
 
"It is absolutely unconscionable that the President would be threatening to veto the CHAMP Act and leave millions of children without access to healthcare," Congressman Cummings said. "He needs to begin demonstrating the same stubbornness toward making sure that our children have access to the healthcare they need that he has been exhibiting in spending billions upon billions of our taxpayer dollars in Iraq. He should not turn his back to the children in his own back yard."
 
Congressman Cummings also introduced Deamonte's Law, which would increase dental services in community health centers and train more individuals in pediatric dentistry, and he has encouraged both Governor O'Malley and the Maryland General Assembly to make dental legislation a priority during the upcoming legislative session.

"Access to quality healthcare, including dental care, is not a privilege; it is a right," Congressman Cummings said. "No child should be refused that right."

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