Our state offers a benefit with special needs adoption called medical Subsidy. If your adopted child has a medical issue, which, was not caused by you, your care, or your lack of care, then the state may pay for the treatment. You need to fill out the correct paperwork, get documentation, and then wait a few months for approval. Sometimes you also have to wait a few months for them to start paying, but it does work and we’ve utilized it several times.

We have a twelve-year-old son currently in braces, which we had approved through medical subsidy. The orthodontist office is very familiar with the procedure, because they also did our 24-year-old daughter’s braces and billing when she was 15, through the same system. First, they bill our private insurance and when the cap is met, they begin billing the state through medical subsidy.

Last Friday, we ran into our first real glitch with the whole system. My son went to his appointment very happy because he was supposed to get his braces off, after nearly two years. I dropped him off and went to get gas in the car. When I came back, he was already finished with his appointment and still had his braces on. He was very disappointed, especially since he’s going to be at camp all this week.

He said that one of his teeth wasn’t quite straight enough. Well, that seemed like a reasonable story, so I believed it. However, he failed to make his next appointment, so I contacted the office to set it up, and expressed his dismay to the receptionist. That’s when she told me the real story.

The orthodontist office is holding my son’s teeth hostage. Apparently, the state hasn’t sent them a payment since February. She said in the past, when they have gone ahead and removed the braces, patients have disappeared, never returning, and never paying. So, they have a new policy, to leave the braces on, until the bill is paid in full.

You can imagine that I was a little bit upset. First of all, because they haven’t mentioned to me over the past three months that the state discontinued payments, so I haven’t been able to check into the problem at all. I’m not sure, if the reasoning lay in our state’s current debt situation and lack of funds, or if the problem lay with their billing procedure. They didn’t bother ask me about a possible resolution, just took my child’s teeth hostage, so I felt like I wasted my time and gas taking my son to the appointment. In addition, it cost me even more because I had to take him to McDonalds for double cheeseburger grief therapy.

Not to mention that this is the fourth child of mine whom they have put braces on. We have two more children under the observation of the orthodontist, waiting to lose baby teeth, so they can begin treatment. Chances are, we aren’t candidate for sneaking across the border with our smuggled 28 pearly whites, never to return.

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