BOHMAC Call to Action

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An Important Message from OHAT!

Hello, Oral Health Advocates!  

Tuesday’s hearing on An Act to Restore MassHealth Adult Dental Benefits was a success! Despite the 23 other bills being heard, our advocates filled more than a third of the hearing room wearing red, donning stickers, and testifying on three excellent panels calling for the immediate restoration of MassHealth adult dental benefits. Thank you to everyone for sticking it out for three hours in a hot, crowded hearing room for the chance to show your support!

Legislators have already indicated that they’ve taken note of the strong support at the hearing.

Now it is time to turn our attention to the budget. The House Ways & Means committee released their budget yesterday, and while it included level-funding at $1.4M for the Department of Public Health’s Office of Oral Health (line item 4512-0500), the proposal does not included language to restore MassHealth adult dental benefits.

Representative Scibak is filing an amendment for full restoration of MassHealth adult dental benefits effective January 1, 2014. It is critical that we demonstrate broad support. Here’s how you can help:

  • Call your Representative and ask them to cosponsor Representative Scibak’s amendment. See below for a call script. 
  • Forward this email. The more calls we generate, the more cosponsors we’ll earn. Please share this email with your networks.

Thank you for all that you do!

Contacting Your Representative

Five minutes will make a big difference!

But you need to act quickly. Your Representative needs to contact Representative Scibak by NOON tomorrow, Friday, April 12th, so they need to hear from you TODAY!

Calling your Representative is easy and effective – here’s how:

  • Call and ask to speak with your Representative. It is also okay to speak with an aide.
  • Tell them your name and that you live in the Representative’s district.  They may ask for your address.
  • State that you are a member of the Oral Health Advocacy Taskforce and are calling to strongly urge them to support Representative Scibak’s amendment to fully restore MassHealth adult dental benefits.
  • Let them know the amendment would go into effect on January 1, 2014 and would cost $72 million. Be sure to let them know that funding for full restoration would be made possible millions in enhanced revenue coming to the Commonwealth in January 2014 when other provisions of national health reform take effect.
  • Ask them if they will commit to signing on to Representative Scibak’s amendment, restoring medically necessary health care services for more than 800,000 individuals in Massachusetts.
  • Thank them for their time.

Thank you for taking the time to make your calls this afternoon!

Please contact Courtney Chelo at 617-275-2935 or cchelo@hcfama.org or Rebekah Fiehn 617-988-2263 or rfiehn@betteroralhealthmass.org and let us know how it went. The more we know about who has committed to sign on, the better we can target our efforts.  

(Not sure who your Representative is? Click here to find out.)