Dear Citizens and Elected Officials:
The New York Times ran a powerful and accurate story today, Sunday, August 29, 2021 about the possibility of including dental care in the nation’s Medicare program. It was written by Margot Sanger-Katz and entitled “Five Decades Later, Medicare Might Cover Dental.” Here’s the link to the story: www.nytimes.com/…
Given the situation I am in - retrospective dental, current dental and prospective dental - here is how I responded.
billofrightsMaryland2h agoBravo: I'll add some personal testimony. I'm on Medicare since 2015. Even when I worked for a environmental group in NJ, our good CEO Tom Gilmore struggled to get medical policies - which would last a year before the private company dropped us. They never had dental care provisions, and indeed I've never had a dental plan since working in the public sector in NJ in the 1980's. And never been able to afford it since then; around 2016, I had two infections which made my face look liked I swallowed a soft ball. I had to apply to a local charity, prove my low income and the extractions were paid for that way (not the antibiotics to stop the infections.)Right now I've got another softball episode accompanied by pain of 7-8 on a 1-10 scale. Ten days ago I shopped around for a private dental policy and they are all outrageously bad "financial" deals: $600-$700 per year but only paying annual benefits up to $1500. Which doesn't go very far in the American Dental Association world. By the way, the practice I went to for the current problem was welcoming, but not so the other dentists I called in my emergency. Go to the emergency room they said - the worst deal for the patient and the public. However, because the US is now so paranoid about opioid abuse, prescribing anything more than the over the counter products never came up. We say in America there is no such thing as class; when mouths open it will dispose of that myth. Full human dignity includes dental care.
Reply17 Recommend
Share
Let me clarify a few things which I did not have space for in my comment “allotment.” If forced to choose between universal medical coverage and no dental for me, for Medicare recipients, I think I would have to choose, sadly, Medicare for All. We shouldn’t have to make that choice, but that’s what American politics has “dictated,” it not being unreasonable, given the polling results, to indicate some gaping flaws in democracy where the American Dental lobby blocks coverage, just as the AMA did for so many years for any type of public health care plans.
Of course the professional dentists are right: there is creeping socialism coming out of every pleading American mouth, although I have to say, a lot of poor Americans don’t smile out of shame.
The picture I chose came from an excellent article at aeon, a new site for me, written by Sarah Smarsh and published October 23, 2014, entitled “There is no worse shame than poor teeth in a rich world.” It’s a powerful auto-biography of her life with bad teeth, and even though I’ve almost always been behind in dental care, except when I was young, and briefly, while married, my stories can’t match hers. I highly recommend it: aeon.co/…
Given everything else happening in the world, in Afghanistan, about to descend upon New Orleans, in the declining state of American democracy, perhaps that’s all I should say.
Except: if you happen to live in rural Western Maryland, and attend church, please show this little essay to your authority figure, the local preacher.
Best to you all
billofrights
Frostburg, MD