Editorial: Protecting their own

State board acts for dentists, not public

Editorial, Sacramento Bee February 6, 2006

Many important events in state government occur in small rooms away from public view. A case in point: a meeting of the Dental Board of California last month in a South San Francisco hotel.

At that meeting, the board voted 5 to 0 with three abstentions to oppose a bill it previously supported. The bill, AB 1334 by Assemblyman Simon Salinas, D-Salinas, is in the Senate. It would permit specially trained dental hygienists to clean the teeth of poor children, homebound seniors, the disabled and other people with limited access to dental care - without direct supervision by a dentist and without a prescription.

As a government body, the Dental Board is supposed to represent the interest of the public. Last May, the board voted in the public interest to support AB 1334. At the meeting last month, board members abruptly switched positions. All those present and voting were dentists. The three nondentists on the board were absent. One of them, Kevin Biggers, said the vote change didn't surprise him and that the board "is more concerned with protecting dentists than protecting Californians."

The Salinas bill addresses an oral health crisis: widespread tooth decay among the poor. The ones the bill would help have no health insurance. They live in communities with few if any dentists. Most have never seen a dentist. The choice here isn't between dentists and dental hygienists; it's between dental hygienists and nothing.

The bill got out of the Assembly last week on a close party-line vote, with local Assemblymen Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks, Alan Nakanishi, R-Lodi, and Tim Leslie, R-Roseville, voting "no." The measure now goes to the Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee, where the Senate's lone dentist, Sen. Sam Aanestad, R-Grass Valley, sits. Will he vote to protect his fellow dentists or the public?