Personal Responsibility

Matt Yglesias bemoans the problem of children having access to proper dental care here, saying

16 percent of all children and twenty percent of children under the age of six live in households that are below the poverty line. A family of four is below the poverty line earning $21,200. If you’re a woman earning $21,200 a year and raising three children, you’re going to find that it’s really, really hard to take care of all your regular children’s regular needs.

This is all well and good, except for the fact that, whoops, those kids are already covered under Medicaid, and will continue to be covered under Medicaid and SCHIP regardless of the hardships of a recession:

Medicaid covers comprehensive dental care for children through the Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic and Treatment (EPSDT) benefit, which federal law requires all states to provide to children. A distinctive focus of EPSDT is prevention-oriented care to maximize children’s health and development and avert the health and financial costs of long-term disability. Under EPSDT, states must cover all medically necessary dental services for children, including screening and diagnostic services, and needed treatment and follow-up care. The states cannot limit their dental services or spending for children. [Emp. mine]

So, you know, we have a pretty good system in place for taking care of low income children’s toothaches. It’s the responsibility of parents, however, to make sure that those kids actually get taken care of (or, say, that they brush their teeth/consume less candy and soda). As to Matt’s larger point: it’s also the responsibility of parents to get them everything else they need as well. For the unfortunate few who can’t, yes, we as a society should step in and help out. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to try and keep the number of children raised by government funding as small as possible.