Investigation Claims Some Dental Chains Providing Unneeded Work To Milk Medicaid Cash Cow

People covered by Medicaid often complain that they are not getting the treatments that people with private health insurance receive. But a recent report claims that some high-volume dental chains are pushing their dentists to deliberately perform unnecessary procedures on Medicaid patients in order to make more money.

In a new interview with ProPublica, David Heath of the Center for Public Integrity talks about the findings of the Center’s recent investigation into these mega chains.

“We looked at two of the larger chains, and found evidence that these companies were putting pressure on their dentists to produce at certain revenue targets,” explains Heath, whose investigation was the subject of a recent Frontline (scroll down to watch the entire episode), “thus encouraging them to do procedures that may have been unnecessary.”

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