FLORIDA MEDICAID RECIPIENT FAILS TO FIND ORAL SURGEON

James Webb, a disabled Central Florida man who was told that he needed to have all of his teeth removed, is unable to find even one oral surgeon in the entire State of Florida willing to do a whole mouth extraction of his teeth. Webb, a 56 year old semi-retired construction worker, had rampant infectious process and decay in his teeth causing him to be on antibiotics for 9 of the past 12 months.
The whole scenario began in March of 2009 when Webb had a series of seizures culminating in a pulmonary embolism and coma. Webb bit off several of his teeth during the seizures and was then put on anti-seizure medicine Dilantin that is known to cause gum and teeth problems also as a side effect. The cumulative effect was to cause Webb’s teeth to become so painful and infected that his Primary Care Physician, his Dentist and two or three Oral Surgeons all agreed that whole mouth extraction and dentures was the only course of action to take!
Webb began 9 months ago trying to find a participating oral surgeon to remove his teeth, they had to be removed by an oral surgeon because of Webb’s underlying poor health condition and because so many of his teeth required to be cut out as they were broken off at the gum line!
With the assistance of Medicaid’s Area 7 District Office Webb was given a list of probably 20 Oral Surgeons who were participating providers, only two though were in our district, “Area 7”, so that is where I began searching for my oral surgeon!
To my surprise both were in Orlando and neither were prepared to take me on as a patient. One doctor told me he only operated on persons under the age of 21 years, the other told me he only accepted patients with straight out Medicaid coverage!
Anybody on Medicaid in Florida knows that after the first 30 days you are forced to select a healthplan, HMO or PPO! Nobody retains regular Medicaid whether you wish to or not! So, the two Area 7 Oral Surgeons were out of the running! Next, I began calling from Miami to Jacksonville to every major university hospital, clinic and independent Medicaid healthcare provider. After several months of being put on waiting lists, told I was ineligible because they didn’t accept the particular HMO I had chosen, and being informed that others were just not accepting “out of area” patients!
As a citizen concerned about my rights and the rights of others I realized that the Medicaid Program had arbitrarily and deliberately failed to provide me with even the most basic of healthcare and that they were willfully indifferent to my being unable to procure even the most basic dental and health care!
Further, they were allowing their participating providers to turn away patients arbitrarily even when they had a space available for an appointment based upon the patients geographic residence within the State of Florida. I’m pretty sure this violates the Equal Protection Under the Law Clauses of both the Florida and U.S. Constitutions
and also their Regulations/Rules and Administrative Orders regarding choosing a healthplan, HMO or PPO is just a means to deny otherwise eligible patients from receiving treatments they are otherwise eligible to enjoy as Medicaid covered patients!
These facts are not only mindlessly unfair they are illegal, Medicaid functions on tax dollars and is licensed by the State of Florida to provide Healthcare for millions of Florida residents. How can they knowingly allow these aforementioned conditions to proceed unchallenged! How can we hold them accountable for this kind of deliberate indifference to the suffering of their patients. They are not a corporation accountable to a board of directors but a State funded agency that is supposed to be interested in the welfare and healthy wellbeing of their members!
My current action is to try and be reimbursed the $3000 I had to borrow from my family to pay an Oral Surgeon to remove my teeth and get rid of all the infection I’ve been carrying around for the past year. I can use all the help I can get and am willing to accept any advice, guidance or experience from someone else who has also been down this path with Medicaid? I’m told it is no easy thing to get reimbursement money out of them!

Sincerely,
____________
James M. Webb

contact me at: webbjames1@gmail.com