A couple of years ago I wrote a post called “The Silent Epidemic” about the lack of dental care for the poor.
There’s a perception that dental health is somehow a ‘luxury’. Not for the poor, it isn’t. We are judged more harshly by our appearance than most, and teeth are a big part of that. I grew up with a kid who’d had to have his teeth removed and replaced by a dental plate before he was 12. He was ostracized by other kids, seen as retarded by the school administration even though he was quite bright, and in general placed on a path that would ensure he never rose above his ‘natural place’.
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It’s something we suffer in silence and nobody else is talking about it, either. Dental insurance exists but it’s prohibitively expensive even though most dental procedures are a lot cheaper than your standard medical procedure; health insurance will pay thousands of dollars for a tonsillectomy but refuse to pay a few hundred for a root canal. I don’t, in all honesty, know why.
Maybe it’s because only the poor need help paying for such things.
I remember wanting to mention at the time that poor dental care can sometimes mean death but I didn’t write that because I didn’t think anybody would believe me.
Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died of a toothache Sunday. (more…)
Filed under: Budget, Bush/Bush Administration, Children, Health Care, Medicaid, Poverty, Racism, The Class War, The Corporatocracy, War on the Poor | 7 Comments »
