Wendell Potter: America's Hidden Epidemic that Obamacare Barely Touches [View all]

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http://wendellpotter.com/2013/09/americas-hidden-epidemic-that-obamacare-barely-touches/

While we’ve been reminded countless times that nearly 50 million Americans have no medical insurance — one of the compelling reasons for health care reform — comparatively little attention has been paid to the fact far more of us — an estimated 130 million — lack dental insurance. And of those who do have it, coverage is often skimpy at best.

As if that weren’t bad enough, we have a shortage of dentists that is only going to get worse when the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented in a little more than three months. The good news is that the ACA will increase the number of children eligible for dental coverage under existing federal programs by up to 5.3 million. The bad news is that there will not be enough dentists to treat them. There aren’t enough to meet current demand. Only a small percentage of dentists accept Medicaid patients. And nearly 50 million Americans live in communities, both rural and urban, where there are no dentists.

This lack of access is not just a problem for those most directly affected. All of us are paying a steep price. Just one example: in 2009, there were an estimated 830,000 visits to hospital emergency rooms for problems that could have been treated more appropriately and less expensively in a dental office. As former Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis Sullivan noted in a New York Times op-ed last year, emergency room visits for oral health problems cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars every year. The cost to Florida taxpayers alone was estimated at $88 million in a recent year.

Tragically, many of our neighbors who wind up in the E.R. every year, including children, never return home because they simply waited too long to get the care they needed. That’s because of the close connection between oral health and overall health. Infections from tooth abscesses all too frequently migrate from patients’ decayed teeth to their brains, often resulting in death.