The cost of a smile: Low Medicaid reimbursements shut rural Iowans out of dental

The cost of a smile: Low Medicaid reimbursements shut rural Iowans out of dental

For Missy Poush, a dental visit has always carried the weight of her past — the years she spent homeless, the teeth she couldn’t afford to fix. So three years ago, when her dentist said he could no longer treat her or her four children, because of low Medicaid reimbursements, it reopened old wounds. “We got kicked out,” she said. “It now feels like sliding backward where I had made progress in my life.” Poush, a Grinnell resident, said that when…