Roughly five million New Yorkers will be able to get Medicaid coverage for root canals, replacement dentures, dental implants and other vital dental procedures, as part of a settlement in a federal class action lawsuit. The new rules offer a lifeline to patients who have had to deal with social embarrassment, depression and escalating health issues caused by dental-related afflictions.
Under the terms of the settlement, the state can no longer deny crown and root canal coverage to people with more than four pairs of back teeth touching – a restriction that previously required patients to have infected or abscessed teeth pulled. The settlement also lifts the ban on crown lengthening and dental implant coverage, as well as the strict limits on replacement dentures – allowing patients to get coverage if the procedures are deemed medically necessary.
The Legal Aid Society, which represented the class action clients in Manhattan Federal Court, said the changes to the state’s Medicaid laws provide important care and basic dignity to indigent people lacking the means to afford dental work.
“Anyone can appreciate that inadequate dental care leads to unemployability, social isolation and medical complications,” said Mary Eaton, a partner at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer US LLP, which along with Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP also represented the class action clients.
The suit was initially filed against the state Department of Health by two men in 2018. Frank Ciaramella, a Staten Island resident who was suffering from end-stage renal disease, was denied coverage for a set of replacement dental implants after a set of upper dentures were run over by a car. Richard Palazzolo of Suffolk County, whose lower dentures were stolen in 2017 from a homeless shelter, where he lived after his father died in 2015, was told Medicaid wouldn’t replace them because the rules only allowed for replacements every eight years.
Nine more plaintiffs joined the lawsuit with similar stories of pain, inability to eat properly and depression. Four of the plaintiffs did not live to see the settlement, including Ciaramella, who died in December 2020.
Source: New York Daily News
