You know things must really be getting bad when the mainstream media starts asking questions. Even if the questions dance around the truth a bit, it still is powerful to see it there. The August 10 issue of USA Today on page 5A had this title: More Americans turning to dentures to get, keep jobs. Now, this in itself is a bit of a con job by the writer and editor of that paper.
The article goes on to say how ‘nearly one in five of working age adults in some Southern and Appalachian states have lost six or more teeth.’ It goes on to state that 45 million Americans face dental care shortages, especially in rural areas. Then, to add salt onto their readership’s truth seeking, the article infers that ‘the need has spurred oral care professionals to respond with new ways to make dentures quickly and inexpensively to help those patients get back into the workforce’. What hogwash! The cause, in most cases, of this dilemma, is that many of us just cannot afford to have the preventative dental care that would not allow our teeth to go missing in the first place!
This writer’s brother lived and taught college on the border of Mexico, in Texas. He and his wife would walk over the border, to a secured area (for the large ‘ gringo ‘ business these clinics there attracted ) and go to a top shelf dentist. The cost for all and any of the work done: approximately one third of our costs here.
One of the most important procedures to help stop bone loss and gum disease is periodontal surgery, done right in the office and taking perhaps 20 minutes for each quadrant of the mouth. The cost here in the USA is now up to $1,500 to 1,800 per quadrant, or $6,000 to $7,200 for the whole job. Since most Americans have NO dental coverage or if they do, have limited coverage, who can afford that fee for those of us who earn less than let us say $100k a year? As it is, dental insurance plans pay out maybe 50% of the cost of the procedure . . . or even less!
Obamacare made sure that there was NO dental coverage at all. So, the choice is simple to most working stiffs: Beg , borrow or steal for the money for gum surgery ($6,000 to $7,200), root canal on a tooth ($1,100) or a crown ($1,100) or . . . fork over the $150-$200 to get the tooth pulled. If you are on Medicaid (for all those right-wingers out there who think the low income folks have it made), in many states 20% or fewer dentists even take Medicaid! And of course, for dentures, Medicaid in most places does not cover them at all!
So, in essence, the USA Today article was another con job piece to divert us from the real problem. What we need here in this so called ‘great economic free market nation’, is a little dose of Socialism . . . just like we have with Social Security, Medicare, our military, local police, fire etc. How many more of us working stiffs have to walk around with holes in our mouths (this writer has FOUR) before the outrage becomes too much to bear? How many more politicians from both of our empire’s parties are you going to support while your family’s gums and teeth rot away from too little care? It is not about dentures, which is like giving the poor GI who had his leg blown away (in some desert he never should have been sent to in the first place) a prosthetic leg after the fact! It is about dignity!
Philip A Farruggio is son and grandson of Brooklyn, NYC longshoremen. He is a freelance columnist (found on Nation of Change Blog, Truthout.org, TheSleuthJournal.com, Worldnewstrust.com, Intrepid Report , The Peoples Voice, Information Clearing house, Dandelion Salad, Activist Post, Dissident Voice and many other sites worldwide). Philip works as an environmental products sales rep and has been an activist leader since 2000. In 2010 he became a local spokesperson for the 25% Solution Movement to Save Our Cities by cutting military spending 25%. Philip can be reached at PAF1222@bellsouth.net.
The takeover of medical care by private insurance companies in the US was engineered by the war criminal Nixon in the 1970s. Think about it: insurance companies are driven by the profit motive. They gain by refusing to pay, and to cut costs to benefit their bottom line. The less service you receive, the better for them. Parasites!
Compounding the problem is the fact that so many US doctors/dentists are private companies and businessmen who gain from charging more for their services. Contrast this with socialized medicine in Western Europe, where docs are well salaried employees, and in Germany and Taiwan, where their pricing is tightly regulated by the government.
Join the movement to demand “Single Payer”
https://www.healthcare-now.org/
and make medical and dental schools affordable for many more of our intelligent, socially conscious college students. Forgive the big student debts of our current health care providers
Those greedy docs who want the big bucks can operate outside the system