Dientes Provides Over $31,000 in Free Dental Care to Seniors

On Saturday, August 7th Dientes celebrated seniors in our community with a day of free dental care at their main clinic on Commercial Way in Santa Cruz. Give Seniors a Smile Day, an annual event for low-income, uninsured senior patients, was put on hold last year due to COVID. This year, with safety protocols in place, Dientes was able to serve 69 seniors and provide $31,337 in free oral health services.

Smiles were abundant and patients were eager to share their gratitude for Dientes’ staff, who created a fun seventies theme for the day, with classic tunes and brightly colored decorations. Laura Lee, a senior who helps care for both her son with Parkinson’s disease and dementia and his epileptic daughter, says everything has been so much harder since COVID began. “You have no idea how much I have been fighting for my family. You’ve got to push so much. So, to get a call from Dientes asking me to come in on Saturday to get my teeth cleaned for free – that was just unbelievable. The young man who worked on my teeth was delightful. I thought, gosh did I go to heaven and not know it?”

Laura Lee had previously visited Dientes in June when she lost a large filling and was having trouble chewing. “It was bad, but Dientes fit me in and I was so elated. Getting that taken of was one less problem in life. And, I could eat again.”

Dientes also launched advocacy efforts for seniors on this day. Dientes CEO Laura Marcus commented, “There is a systemic problem with Medicare. It doesn’t include coverage for dental services, which is both costly and can have serious health implications. Give Seniors a Smile Day is important to meet the needs of our local seniors, but we need to let our representatives know that Medicare needs to be fixed.”

Hopefully, change is on the way. If passed, the Medicare Dental Benefit Act of 2021: H.R. 502 and S. 97, introduced into Congress on January 28, 2021, would:

• Add oral health coverage to Medicare Part B, treating the coverage of oral health services the very same way as other health services in the Medicare program.
• Offer sufficiently comprehensive oral health coverage, including dentures, and ensure that Medicare will reimburse for these services the same way it does for other health services.
• Support access to care for low-income Medicare enrollees to ensure adequate reimbursement for dental providers who serve low-income enrollees.

For more information and to help support the Medicare Dental Benefit Act of 2021: dientes.org/seniors