Dental Care Should Be Part of Universal Healthcare

[Utopian Leftist]

82. I've been wondering . . .

when someone would raise this issue. Thank you for doing so!

I live on Social Security, in California, where everything is more expensive. A root canal here is like $800 unless you have insurance. I had an abscessed tooth this year and the American dentist I went to demanded to have my bank account info before they would perform a root canal. Medicare would have pulled the tooth. A front tooth. And replaced it with NOTHING--just left a huge gaping hole there in front. Medicare would have left me looking like Cletus the Slack-jawed Yokel from the Simpsons. But at least I'd still be alive (an abscessed tooth can kill you).

I had to go to Tijuana, where it still cost me close to $200. With the crown it came to over $500 there. I may have to sell my car just so I can pay bills. Despite that, praise be to Tijuana! I don't know how anyone else in this state, who is living below the poverty level, can afford even emergency dental work. There used to be something here called Denti-Cal, which was a part of MediCal (California's Medicaid system). With Denti-Cal you could get reasonable dental work done for reasonable prices (less than what I paid in Tijuana). Schwarzenegger got rid of that, and Jerry Brown has done nothing to bring it back.

I searched everywhere, googled like mad, there is nothing, NOTHING where I live that helps poor adults get dental work. Occasionally there are clinics but they have waiting lists to get on waiting lists. The only help I found is for children or for the homeless, both noble causes, just not nearly adequate. I live in San Diego and I really was not able to find any help whatsoever. If this is happening in a "blue" state, I can't imagine the untold suffering that is going on out there. America increasingly looks like something out of Dickens.