Just cause we happen to live in the richest country on the planet. Don't expect you're entitled to dental care.
Just cause you've got a pesky tooth that's been getting a bit sensitive to hot and cold and you haven't been to a dentist in say ten or fifteen years. Don't expect you're entitled to dental care.
Don't expect these stupid things luxuries, dear Kossacks. Make no mistake, dental care is no different than a Lexus in your garage, it's not for common folk like you and me.
One of the first diaries I posted on Daily Kos I called My $600 filling. Yeah, you heard me, a f**king dental filling.
After that experience, I felt as if I had been turned upside down and the fucking dentist just let the money fall out of my pockets.
I'm going to tell you about another third rail of American politics. Two words: Dental care. You want to see an angry American? Mention dental care and the lack thereof, Americans will roll their eyes and quake with anger.
Turn to the person on your right, now turn to the person on your left, ask her if she needs to go to a dentist? Ask her if she can afford to see a dentist? Ask her if she has dental insurance? Then ask if the dental insurance is worth the paper it's printed on?
If healthcare in the United States is a privilege, then dental care is just about off limits for oh say, 100,000,000 or so Americans.
I'd like to tell you one way I keep my finger on the pulse of what's happening in our nation under siege. It's imperfect, but it's interesting.
I read the New York Times. I also always look at the list of the most emailed stories from the paper. Invariably that list is a little clue to what people are thinking, what's bothering them, which candidates are making an impression, and so on.
Paul Krugman, Frank Rich and articles about the collapse of our healthcare system are always on the New York Times most emailed list. The healthcare catastrophe has penetrated deep into the psyche and wallets of the middle class readers of the Times.
Recently, this one, Boom Times for Dentists, but Not for Teeth was the number one emailed article from the New York Times. Dental care in the United States is unaffordable for almost all but the wealthy.
You think your teeth are hurting, so are the cuspids of 100,000,000 Americans.
For American dentists, times have never been better.
The same cannot be said for Americans' teeth.
With dentists' fees rising far faster than inflation and more than 100 million people lacking dental insurance, the percentage of Americans with untreated cavities began rising this decade, reversing a half-century trend of improvement in dental health.
. . .For middle-class and wealthy Americans, straight white teeth are still a virtual birthright. And dentists say that a majority of people in this country receive high-quality care.
But many poor and lower-middle-class families do not receive adequate care, in part because most dentists want customers who can pay cash or have private insurance, and they do not accept Medicaid patients. As a result, publicly supported dental clinics have months-long waiting lists even for people who need major surgery for decayed teeth. At the pediatric clinic managed by the state-supported University of Florida dental school, for example, low-income children must wait six months for surgery.
In some cases, the results of poor dental care have been deadly. A child in Mississippi and another in Maryland died this year from infections caused by decayed teeth.
http://query.nytimes.com/...
The lack of access to affrdable dental care in the United States is a national shame, a national disgrace and a national catastrophe.
Bad teeth can kill you. And a tooth abscess is what killed a young boy named Deamonte Driver earlier this year. Deamonte suffered terribly and died because he was a Medicaid patient and his poor mother couldn't locate a dentist who would accept Medicaid.
I asked in that diary and I'm asking again:
Imagine if the story that follows were about the beloved child of a member of Congress.
Do the children of our elected representatives go to school in pain?
Do the children of our elected officials die of untreated dental disease?
Americans are traveling to the four corner of the earth searching for affordable dental care. As I wrote exactly one year ago,the crisis has burrowed deep into the middle class. Americans are heading to exotic locations for root canals and assorted dental procedures simply because they can no longer shoulder the prohibitive costs in the United States.
A turning point for me personally on the grim reality of dental care being a preserve of the affluent in the United States came during Katrina. I wrote a diary called Open your f*#king eyes, evacuees have NO TEETH! During those awful days, I was struck by the fact that so many of the beautiful faces we saw were of toothless American citizens.
But like healthcare, dental care is also not a right, but a privilege in the richest nation in the world.
I'll leave you with this. I've been reading lately that Congressional job approval ratings are hovering in the 24% range. Could this be because the American people are looking around and seeing their lives literally disintergrating before them? Little things like losing their homes, losing their healthcare, losing their jobs,losing their pensions--and what the fuck are our representatives doing? Getting their teeth fixed. Next time you see these hard working folks on CNN, take a look at those unnaturally white teeth. They've probably included teeth whitening in their Cadillac tax-payer funded health benefits package.
They're not doing a God damn anything. And that's the truth.
Here's a web site for affordable health care in various Third World countries if you can get a passport. BTW, I don't know anything about this particular web site, so please do your homework before you, sign up with any group or organization.