There is currently a recommended diary by the splendid nyceve, regarding a foofrah about Dennis Kucinich, an olive pit, a broken tooth, a lawsuit, etc., etc. Many of the comments focus on individual horror stories of dental work and how expensive it is (with a healthy shake of how frightened people are to go to the dentist in the first place). But one subject is continually circumvented, as it has been in the real world for many years.
Why is dental care considered separate from "health care"? For that matter, why are optical care and mental health care also considered not a part of your health?
I don't have any links to grandiose research or collected statements or anything like that -- only my own ramblings. If anyone would care to add citations in comments, I'd appreciate it. But this is, I think a matter of simple common sense, even moreso than any discussion involving preventive care.
If you've got a toothache, it screws up your day. You can't work, can't think, you've got a throbbing pain in your face. A broken tooth? Jumps ahead of every other priority to the front of the line. You have to take time off of work and go find a medical specialist. The old string-on-the-doorknob thing isn't gonna work.
(Cast Away is a horror film. Remember when Tom Hanks mentions in the first reel that he's gonna have to have a tooth looked at soon? As soon as he does, a ripple goes through the audience, as they know that sucker's gonna go off when he's in the middle of the Pacific. Aaaaaand he ends up having to do his own extraction with a big rock and an ice skate. To heck with Novocaine -- I wonder where on the island he found antibiotics...?)
Optical care is much the same. If you don't meet a certain minimum level of adequate vision, you're not allowed to drive. You need to be able to read -- if not, the grand bulk of jobs are not open to you, from the very first blurry line of the application form. Heck, the software on which you're reading this diary has numerous aids to get the words into your brain, from font adjustment to magnification to text-to-speech.
Think about this: If your vision is blurry, and you drop your glasses on the floor, you may in fact lose them until your find them by touch... or crunch.
How many of you have had to stop what you're doing to clean or replace a contact lens? It'll drive you frickin' crazy.
Crazy. There are a lot of people out there who have emotional difficulties to one degree or another. Thankfully, most of those don't approach the level of whatever demons Jared Loughner has in his head. But a lot of them, a lot of of surprisingly common emotional difficulties, can lay you out completely. I have, and I would wager you have, friends who need to be on anti-depressants or else they could not face the outside world. A couple of mine spent years trying to find the correct chemical cocktail that would allow them to perform their jobs or conduct day-to-day business or simply talk to strangers without breaking down into sobbing wrecks.
Some of that can be covered by regular health care. I had an accident a couple of years back, wracked up my leg real good, and I worked my ass off to get back on my feet. But several months after I thought everything was tickety-boo, I suddenly realized my paranoia regarding a few things had increased to a ridiculous level -- e.g., second-guessing whether the frozen dinner I had just made was actually fully frozen, or on a recall list, or had the seal of the packaging been compromised, or...? Or did I just lock the door when I left for the weekend? (The latter grew to the point that, twice, I called a friend to check my house while I was out-of-state.)
I went to my GP, and she said she'd never seen me in such bad shape. She said that shock from an injury can often cause such emotional states, and it can take awhile for them to manifest. She prescribed a simple, inexpensive antidepressant, which, after a few weeks, got my head back to where it should be.
All fine. But what if I'd needed extensive counseling? Or to see a psychiatrist? Or if I'd needed physical treatment to counter whatever it was?
These are all conditions, medical conditions, that require medically trained specialists to treat. Even a frickin' optician has some knowledge about the human eye and conditions and diseases that can impair it. Dental, mental, and optical care are all a part of your personal health, and left untreated they can incapacitate you just as quickly and thoroughly as any injury or illness. Yet the insurance industry -- and, for that matter, the medical industry -- make them different situations, lesser conditions, plug-ins, bonus modules, expansion packs. They're not. They're all a part of the complete package.
We have to begin turning the conversation to complete care.
We have to remind people, convince people, make it a permanent part of the national discussion on health care, that dental, mental, and optical health are all a part of "health", and treating them differently financially is ludicrous. Especially given the "accounts" that jobs often "provide" for optical and/or dental, where you have to pay into the account for the whole year but you can use it all at once on January 1st if you have to, which seems a great thing except if you lose your job on Feb. 11 and have to pay all the money back, which you can't because you just lost your job.
Dental, mental, and optical health care should all be part of comprehensive health care. That they are not, and usually not even discussed together, is unacceptable.