Last week a Senate subcommittee held a hearing into Medicaid dental care in Maryland. A year ago Deamonte Driver died due to lack of dental care and the state has been under pressure ever since to reform and expand its system.

The lead paragraph in the Washington Post story reads: "In the year since a Prince George's County boy died of a dental infection, lawmakers say Maryland has begun addressing the structural problems and funding shortages that are blamed for breakdowns in the state's Medicaid system."

The problem is that Deamonte Driver did not die due to "breakdowns" in the system. Deamonte Driver died because his Medicaid coverage lapsed and no one took him to a dentist in time. Activists continue to use this tragic death as a way to expand Medicaid coverage and enact reforms in the system. But it's hard to see how expanding coverage would help, since Deamonte was eligible for Medicaid, he just wasn't signed up for it. And make all the structural reforms you want, but if a parent doesn't take a kid to the dentist in time, none of them will matter.