In a diary of yesterday, nyceve told of a friend who traveled to Thailand for dental care because dental care is "ridiculously cheaper" in Thailand. [
http://www.dailykos.com/... ] Nyceve said,
For some reason when it comes to our mouths, the insurance industry has successfully removed the oral cavity from the rest of our bodily organs. Hence the dental industry has become the preserve of the rich. There is no way average Americans can maintain their oral health--the costs are simply prohibitive. Obviously, even the middle class can no longer afford the crippling costs of dental care. Look no further than my neighbor who is on his way to Thailand.
This really struck a nerve with me, as did Nyceve's closing question.
Finally, Nyceve posed the question,
have you traveled overseas for health or dental care? And if you have, is it because you're uninsured, or were you encouraged to use the "overseas option" by your employer or your insurance company?
In 2000, I decided to leave the United States for France, after I found it impossible to access psychotherapy and anti-depressants in the US for a price I could afford. When I lived in France as a student, I paid about $400.00 USD per year for comprehensive national health coverage and this covered all of my therapy visits and anti-depressants. Even when I had insurance, proving my need for treatment as challenging as addressing the depression itself.
But, just as I was fleeing to France, a cap popped off one of my teeth. My United States dentist was "all booked up" and, in any case would charge $1000.00 USD for a new crown. That was almost twice as much as I had paid for the car I sold to get the money to go to France.
As an emergency measure, my US dentist agreed to crudely stop-gap the tooth for $200.00 USD. So, I left for at least a year in France with a temporary cap in my mouth.
Although the French national health system coverage is excellent for most things, it doesn't cover any dental work beyond annual cleanings, amalgam fillings and extractions. In France, I got an estimate on my tooth job, just like one gets an estimate on having a house painted or a boiler replaced. A French dentist would have charged me 1,200 Euros ($1,500 USD?) to apply one crown. Since I didn't have the money available, I didn't get the work done.
By the time I moved to Brazil, the tooth that had before only needed "only" a crown now needed a root canal as well. Although the word "crown" makes the procedure sound like an opulent luxury, many readers will understand when I say that a crown is actually a basic preventive measure, since so many ugly things happen within a tooth and in its neighborhood in the absence of a crown.
When I finally went to a Brazilian dentist, it was as if I had died and gone to dentist heaven. An excellent young dentist agreed to do the root canal and the crown for $300.00 (three hundred dollars) USD. He did an excellent job, saw me without an appointment and finished the root canal and crown in less than two weeks. It's still in my mouth and it feels great! I was so happy that I treated him, his wife and his partner to dinner at a fine restaurant! Hell, I could have done that fifty times and still not spent as much as this dental work would have cost me in the United States! I felt as one would upon discovering a gas station where gasoline costs sixty-nine cents a gallon. We greet each other like old friends when I see him on the street.
I think the US dental care industry's motto must be, "Teeth are so precious that we should either pay exorbitant fees to fix them or let them rot and die."
I don't want to be crude, but I think it's fair to say that Americans - those who can afford it - are getting fu%( )cked up the ass when it comes to dentistry. And most of us can't afford to get the royal butt-fu%()ck at all. When American society crumbles like the Incan ruins, our inability to provide for such basic and attainable things as dental care will be remembered as one of the idiocies that led to our downfall.
Meanwhile, if DailyKos' readers' teeth are really hurting and you've still got $2,000 on your credit card, it might be a good time for a vacation in Thailand or Brazil. Write to me at manic_lawyer@yahoo.com if you need my Brazilian dentist's telephone number. I'll even translate for you.