Provides for standardized health insurance contracts for small dental employers

• Democratic10
• Republican2

◆ The sponsor's argument

Why Jamaal Bailey says this is needed

Despite graduating 750 dentists annually - among the highest numbers of any state - New York continues to struggle with unmet need, particularly with respect to Medicaid recipients and other vulnerable populations. Several barriers contribute to the challenges of providing access to dental care to low-income, rural or developmentally disabled individ- uals, including the exorbitant costs of attending dental school, the high costs of establishing a dental practice, and perennially insuffi- cient Medicaid reimbursement rates. This bill seeks to lower overall dental practice expenses by offering qualified dental practices the ability to purchase health insurance coverage for their employees and, it desired, the families of their employees, through the Healthy New York insurance program. New York State currently has 156 dental Health Practitioner Shortage Areas (HPSAs), including 92 designated HPSA facilities and 64 designated HPSA population groups (mostly Medicaid eligible populations). This means that each of these designations has a population-to-provider ratio of at least 4,000 people to 1 dentist. NYS currently meets only 16.68% of the documented need, so it is imperative that we find ways to attract dentists and other oral health professionals to practice in these HPSAs, including by making it financially viable to do so. Recognizing that most dentists practice in private practice settings, this bill seeks to make it easier for dentists to practice in a HPSA by lowering a major driver of dental practice costs.

This is the sponsor's own case for the bill, quoted from their memorandum. It is not Agora's description of what the bill does.