From the Wall Street Journal, of all unlikely sites, “Tying Health Problems to Rise in Home Foreclosures“:
New research by Janet Currie of Princeton University and Erdal Tekin of Georgia State University shows a direct correlation between foreclosure rates and the health of residents in Arizona, California, Florida and New Jersey. The economists concluded in a paper published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research that an increase of 100 foreclosures corresponded to a 7.2% rise in emergency room visits and hospitalizations for hypertension, and an 8.1% increase for diabetes, among people aged 20 to 49.
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Each rise of 100 foreclosures was also associated with 12% more visits related to anxiety in the same age category. And the same rise in foreclosures was associated with 39% more visits for suicide attempts among the same group, though this still represents a small number of patients, the researchers say…
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The economists didn’t find similar patterns with diseases such as cancer or elective surgeries such as hip replacement, leading them to conclude that areas with high foreclosures are seeing mostly an increase of stress-related ailments.[…] __
The areas that have the highest foreclosure rates also tend to have a large portion of their population unemployed, underemployed or uninsured. Ms. Currie says the research accounted for this by instituting controls for persistent differences among areas, such as poverty rates, as well as for county-level trends. The time period examined, 2005 to 2007, was before unemployment peaked, she says. The researchers examined hospital-visit numbers and foreclosure rates in all ZIP Codes that had those data available.
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They found that areas in the top fifth of foreclosure activity have more than double the number of visits for preventable conditions that generally don’t require hospitalization than the bottom fifth.
Our Galtian overlords, of course, echo their patron Saint Ebenezeer, insisting that such unfortunates should just go voluntarily “reduce the surplus population”:
A 24-year-old Cincinnati father died from a tooth infection this week because he couldn’t afford his medication, offering a sobering reminder of the importance of oral health and the number of people without access to dental or health care.
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According to NBC affiliate WLWT, Kyle Willis’ wisdom tooth started hurting two weeks ago. When dentists told him it needed to be pulled, he decided to forgo the procedure, because he was unemployed and had no health insurance.
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When his face started swelling and his head began to ache, Willis went to the emergency room, where he received prescriptions for antibiotics and pain medications. Willis couldn’t afford both, so he chose the pain medications.
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The tooth infection spread, causing his brain to swell. He died Tuesday…
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Getting access to dental care is particularly tough for low-income adults and children, and it’s getting tougher as the economy worsens. In April, the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that 33 percent of people surveyed skipped dental care or dental checkups because they couldn’t afford them. A 2003 report by the U.S. Surgeon General found that 108 million Americans had no dental insurance, nearly 2.5 times the number who had no health insurance.
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Trips to the dentist aren’t the only expenses hard-up Americans are skipping. An August report by the Commonwealth Fund found that 72 percent of people who lost their health insurance when they lost their jobs said they skipped needed health care or did not fill prescriptions because of cost.
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“People want to believe there’s a safety net that catches all of these people, and there isn’t,” said Dr. Glenn Stream, president-elect of the American Academy of Family Physicians. He noted that it is often young men who are the most likely to lack health coverage.
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Dr. Jim Jirjis, director of general internal medicine at Vanderbilt University, said people, like Willis, without access to care often die of conditions that were much more common decades ago.
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“He [Willis] might as well have been living in 1927,” Jirjis said. “All of the advances we’ve made in medicine today and are proud of, for people who don’t have coverage, you might as well never have developed those.”
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
“Everyone has access, it’s called the Emergency Room”. Truly the ‘Let them eat cake’ for our times.
Corner Stone
Lambert posted links to some of this material recently. But apparently he’s insane and/or a PUMA so this study is invalid.
A Mom Anon
it should be noted too that even if you have dental insurance it is often woefully inadaquate. Mine covers 1000 dollars a year. Period. If you need a root canal and a crown,count on it covering about half of the cost,if that. I have never understood why dental problems and care are not considered medical because if it goes bad,it can and does effect your total physical well being. It should all be medical,including eye care too. It’s stupid to have it divided up the way it is.
Argive
Well, it’s their own fault for not having extra money lying around, dontcha know. These people should have saved and invested their money instead of buying T-bone steaks and 40-inch flatscreens.
As I wrote the above paragraph, it occurred to me that if I had posted it on, say, Right Wing News, I’d have dozens of jackholes praising me for speaking truth to power. We live in a truly fucked up society.
arguingwithsignposts
@A Mom Anon:
This.
Linda Featheringill
That is a sad story about the young man who died from a tooth infection. Better medical practice would have been to admit him to the hospital and give him IV antibiotics [and pain medication].
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@Argive:
I’ve seen way too much, on line, on TV, and in real life, of that sentiment. “It’s your fault for choosing to be poor, asshole!!” And the fact that said sentiment seems to be winning the day in all aspects of life just depresses me to the point of not wanting to leave bed in the morning.
Davis X. Machina
Everyone has heard about Michael Marmot’s work — poor fellow has a perfect Monty Python name — on the health risks associated with disparities of wealth and power, right?
Linda Featheringill
Foreclosure sucks. Being forced to move sucks. Losing your job sucks. Doing what you have to do in order to get another one sucks. Putting with all kinds of stuff in order to hang on to your crappy little job sucks.
And all of this is bad for your health.
Living in a rented house in a different, out-of-the-way town is surprisingly pleasant. There really is life after foreclosure.
Corner Stone
Watching This Week for a bit. You have a smooth psychopath like Dana Loesch for the wingnut point of view, and milquetoast Clarence Page for the centrist view.
She’s stomping her point home over and over and he’s trying to make a joke that’s falling flat.
KCinDC
Along with including teeth and eyes as parts of the body for medical coverage, mental health coverage needs to be improved, as the first story indicates.
rikyrah
I saw the story about the Ohio man yesterday and it made me furious and sad – what a fucking waste.
Davis X. Machina
@rikyrah: When you’re a pundit though, the usual rule — one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic — is reversed.
Of cours, YMMV. (Your mustache may vary.)
Corner Stone
Holtz Eakin should be one of the first against the wall.
HRA
@A Mom Anon:
Absolutely true. In addition, I had dental surgery last year that was covered except for the surgeon’s fee. He did not participate in my dental plan.
A Mom Anon
@KCinDC: YES! I meant to include that too. Mental Health coverage is inadequate at best. I think ours is 10 visits to a therapist a year with a 30 dollar co-pay each time. That’s horrific,especially if someone has a bi-polar issue or is chronically depressed. In my area there are many therapists who don’t even take insurance.
For Profit healthcare is obscene.
dr. bloor
@Linda Featheringill:
It’s a tragic story, but admitting folks to the hospital for abscessed teeth really isn’t a viable solution.
Davis X. Machina
@dr. bloor: Barefoot doctors.
Brad DeLong loves ’em.
wrb
This is what makes a lot of the decisions Obama faces- like the recent one over ozone- a lot more complicated than some would like to admit. Pollution kills. Poverty kills too. When the economy is strong enough to absorb the cost of a life-saving regulation, the right course isn’t hard to find. When a lot of people are at the edge of the precipice, it become the sort of decision that can keep one awake at night.
PeakVT
@Linda Featheringill: There may be life after foreclosure, but few people realize that until they experience it for themselves because the messages in the media say the opposite.
dr. bloor
@Davis X. Machina:
Damn. The last time a nurse came to my house to check my prostate, the costume was incredibly cheesy and she took my watch.
WereBear
It’s absolutely sickening that someone dies from an abscessed tooth in our society. Wasn’t the twelve year old boy in Baltimore, a few years back, enough?
Back in the day, you found someone with pliers and drank whiskey because it was common knowledge that the tooth had to come out or it would kill you.
Did no one tell him that?
Because his behavior indicates he seemingly had no clue how dangerous this was.
Shlemizel - was Alwhite
the one bit of luck I did get around this current squamous cell hullabaloo I get to experience is that I changed contract companies 10 months ago. The insurance at my old gig was cheap & would have left me with some pretty big bills. There also would have been no disability leave. My newest company only requires one week unpaid & then pays 70% of my income. That is much better than any thing I have had in the last 20 years.
Its dumb luck, there were reasons to stay at my old gig & reasons not to take this new one. Civilized people shouldn’t have to count on dumb luck for their health and welfare. Civilized societies should understand bad things can happen to people that are not their fault & would support each other on the off chance they might need that help themselves one day.
wrb
@WereBear:
Back in the day, my father’s uncle drank the whiskey but avoided the pliers (and the family, who were almost all physicians or dentists) and it killed him
Shlemizel - was Alwhite
@WereBear:
My wife and I are fascinated by old graveyards & it is stunning how many old tombstones list “bad tooth” or “toothache” as cause of death. I guess we really are going to return this country to “good old days”. The only difference will be there will be no wealthy people dieing of toothaches, back then infection had a more even hand.
Shlemizel - was Alwhite
@A Mom Anon:
That crappy coverage is getting to be the norm. And doctors are making it very difficult to see therapists. Its a double evil against people fighting depression because your brain is already telling you it is hopeless & the doctors are reinforcing that message.
Villago Delenda Est
If you’re in the business of making money off the suffering of others, there is no downside to this.
Well, except that you’re an asshole. But it’s painfully obvious that there are fewer and fewer disincentives to being an asshole in this society.
This is where tumbrels enter into the picture.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
“In South Carolina there are a lot of people who won’t go back to work because they would rather stay at home and collect food stamps and unemployment”.
DeMint
Davis X. Machina
@Shlemizel – was Alwhite: Predicated on the desirability of a civilized society. A civilized society is not a self-evidently desirable bonum per se. The people with the megaphones certainly don’t see it as one.
John Holbo’s piece on Donner-Party conservatism — actually a review of David Frum’s Dead Right, is the locus classicus at least on the internet, for this.
Holbo quotes Frum:
As Holbo points out:
Emphases mine.
Yevgraf
Great Jesus Fuck, look at the commentary on the article about the guy who died from the tooth infection. Can the Chinese please invade and reform us now, please?
drkrick
@Davis X. Machina:
Fixed
suzanne
It is depressing to read this, especially since my daughter’s dentist said we have to start her on orthodontia soon. I just got my hours cut back and my ex-husband is unemployed. Ergh.
Corner Stone
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
CNBC did a whole segment on this the other day. They had a CEO say he had people interview just so they could keep getting their UI. They then discussed several e-mails they received all saying some variant of, “My neighbors’ cousin’s son is trying to hire people and they get people come in and say ‘I don’t want a job, I just gotta do this’ !!”
EconWatcher
This really hits close to home. I recently had very similar problems that, after a number of misdiagnoses, turned out to be from a tooth abcess. I have very good dental and health insurance, but the amount I’ll be out of pocket for oral surgery and root canal will probably come to at least $1500, maybe $2000. I am an extremely fortunate person who can cover this from savings. But I was thinking to myself the whole time, what do people do if they don’t have coverage or savings? Well, here’s the answer. Tragic and disgusting, for a society this wealthy.
PIGL
@Yevgraf: that would get my vote. Maybe they could establish a tribunal that would evaluate people’s internet postings, letters to the editor, bar-room gags, tv talk-show rantings and decide in 30s: live or die.
I’d actually go along with that, take my changes on my 80s rantings in talk.politics.misc.
Every vicious prick Republican mother-fcuker, amoral MBA rat-bastard and garden-variety sociopath: my life is nothing, to send such dogs to hell.
A Mom Anon
@Corner Stone: And nowhere does anyone mention how much that UI check is. GAH! I really think alot of these hacks think UI is just the same as a severance package where you get what you made on the job. Who in the hell would want to try living on 330 a week(I think that’s the max here in GA,it differs from state to state based on cost of living),hell that barely paid our house payment when my husband was out of work.
THIS kind of shit is designed to make people ashamed of being out of work so they won’t talk about it and band together to demand better. That’s precisely why they’re doing this.
cathyx
@suzanne: I know this doesn’t help much, but i’ve seen many adults with braces. Prioritizing food over orthodontia isn’t a sin.
nancydarling
@suzanne: Suzanne, is there a dental school near where you live? It might be worth considering if you have the time. Appointments generally take longer due to instructor checks during the procedure. Since your ex is unemployed, maybe he could take her.
My next thought is if you absolutely can’t afford full braces, talk to an orthodontist about what you can afford to do now with an eye to more definitive treatment in the future. If crowding is the problem (usually the case) extractions with a retainer of some sort might buy some time at a considerably lower price. Good luck with whatever you decide.
Corner Stone
@A Mom Anon:
I agree, and further, I think it’s meant to drive the unemployed into pariah status so politicians can make the safe vote to end UI payments and have the unemployed just “disappear” from society and societal discussions.
Corner Stone
@PIGL:
Newsletter. Do you have one?
PurpleGirl
I’ve had neighbors tell me that they’ve heard about people getting disability or “welfare” (amazing how people don’t admit to knowing the system changed in 1996), or getting food stamps who don’t deserve whatever program help they get. I always ask them “well, have you or the person who knows the fraudster, ever called the authorities about the fraud?” They get silent suddenly.
It often happens that they ask me if I’ve considered getting SS disability since I’m out of work so long. I get the fraudster story when I tell them “I’m not disabled enough.”
Elizabelle
This and the preceding blogpost are pieces of the same elephant.
A Mom Anon
@Corner Stone: Bingo! It needs to be rammed home that the “I” in Unemployment Insurance indicates you paid into it. You and your employer,it’s not some freebie for scavengers. In fact,I will be calling Sen Demint’s office on Tuesday to reiterate that fact. It’s really time to start hammering the elected officials who repeat this shit,HARD.
karen marie
@WereBear: They can’t pull the tooth until the infection is treated with antibiotics.
lambert strether
Just saying.
For those interested, here’s one story on the human cost of DISemployment, and here’s another story on building nets under the Golden Gate bridge so people without jobs don’t jump off it.
But I’m sure patent reform is the answer to this.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Bu – but, the Galivantin’ Galtians promised everyone could receive excellent health care via hospital EDs.
Seriously, the assholes who keep blowing off this shit and scoffing about deadbeats and welfare leeches have NO IDEA how much peril they’re in.
Hope you’ve all been stockpiling supplies in your gated communities, assholes. (And you do have independent energy and water sources, don’t you?)
wrb
@karen marie:
It is better to not pull the tooth until the infection is treated with antibiotics. Before there were antibiotics they pulled the tooth and treated the infection with whiskey.
If you can’t afford antibiotics, the old way might be better, than just accepting death, as did the guy in the article..
Elizabelle
The Baltimore child who died of an abscessed tooth FOUR YEARS AGO was Deamonte Driver.
Rest in peace.
This sh*t should not still be going on.
Washington Post, “For Want of a Dentist”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/27/AR2007022702116.html
WereBear
Excellent advice; my mother gave me some trying times, but one of the best things she ever did was insist I get braces so I wouldn’t suffer with her own protruding canine teeth that I inherited. I wound up wearing the braces until the bill was paid, twice as long as normal would have been; but it made a huge difference, out in the world.
There’s also the “no interest” loans thing. Basically, if you go into the finance office and tell them you want to do this, help me: they will.
Argive
@Yevgraf:
Blargh. Revolting. Further evidence of the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.
Corner Stone
@lambert strether:
Or maybe free trade deals with Panama, or payroll tax cuts?
No reason to choose, we’ll have all three shortly!
Corner Stone
@PurpleGirl:
I love these mythical stories that are promulgated throughout our nutter society. And I mean “mythical” in the fact that every wingnut you know has been behind someone in a grocery line who has used their food stamp card to buy ciggies or beer (even though they are on most states NO list), but none of them have ever reported it to authorities.
I’m sure there is a level of abuse. It happens. But we as a society seem to lack the ability to do risk assessment.
Dennis SGMM
@Corner Stone:
Hell’s bells I would have found living through the landslide election and the near-landslide re-election of Ronald Reagan impossible to live through absent ciggies and beer.
For some of us ciggies and beer are a Food Group
lovable liberal
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: Eventually even the Teahadist ravers whose real objection to gummint is that brown people don’t deserve help will figure out that they’ve been used, abused, and discarded. They’ll still be angry, and they’ll still be armed.
I really don’t understand why the would-be oligarchs can’t see that revolution will come and leave them hung up by their ankles if they continue on their current path. Are they just maximizing the next quarter?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Corner Stone:
I suspect what you may mean is that the wingnuts lack the ability to understand risk assessment, because that would require critical though skills. They’ve been trained to listen to the dog whistles and repeat for truth whatever nonsense is contained in this week’s version, as well as spread it widely to their kindred community. The interwebz, and of course Faux News, have amplified this phenomenon to a dangerous level.
The Spy Who Loved Me
It’s very sad that this man chose the pain meds over the antibiotics. Where I live, every single pharmacy I’ve gone to offers a list of fairly common antibiotics that they will fill for free. I forget about that until I fill something for someone in the family and I don’t get charged for the prescription. I wonder if Cincinnati pharmacies do this? Here, even Walgreens and CVS fill most antibiotics for free.
The Spy Who Loved Me
I wonder why I’m in moderation? I didn’t use any of the no no words.
Emerald
@cathyx: My mother, born in 1920, was married with braces on. It was said that she could “eat corn through a picket fence.”
When she was old enough to get a job, in the depression, she saved to get her own braces.
We’re back to that, apparently. And I don’t have dental insurance either, but I can afford the $70 trimonthly visit to keep my gum disease down.
Corner Stone
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Sadly, it’s not just wingnuts. People all across the spectrum hate people who get something they aren’t. And will believe any nasty idea about them as a result.
Corner Stone
@Dennis SGMM: Moocher.
PurpleGirl
@Corner Stone: Since most food stamp programs have been computerized and people get a debit card, the cash registers in almost all markets have been programed as to what can and can not be bought.
ruemara
Andy Hallett
I wish people understood that dental health is often key to good health. As my Mr. was just panicking himself into a hypertensive episode last night, despite my request for the past 3 years that he just sign up with the local health clinic so he can get some basic medical coverage, I get to experience the fall out from stubborn, instransigent and long term unemployed mental illness near daily. My heart goes out to his family, nothing is going to make this feel better but time.
PIGL
@Corner Stone: How sweet :-)
But “newsletter”? I think those are called “blogs” in this day’n’age.
cckids
@WereBear:
This depends completely on your income and where you live. I’m in S.Nevada, my whole family needs dental work, some of us pretty badly. But because my spouse is self-employed (no regular paycheck), we cannot get financing. The dental college here has a 2 year wait-list last time I heard, they do not return calls. Most dentists & their finance offices here, I have found, believe that “half now, half in 30 days” is a realistic financing offer. Many, if not most, of them, outsource their financing to essentially a credit-card company; if you don’t qualify for that, too bad for you.
There may be some dental office that are better; I have never found them. And I reach my limit; there are only so many times I can hear “no, we don’t do that; no, we only take cash/credit cards for the full amount; no, no, no” before I just give up. I’ve faced this same attitude for years with my oldest son’s Medicaid & finding docs for him now that he is an adult, & it is psychologically wearing to a tremendous degree.
Corner Stone
@PurpleGirl: Kind of my point. It’s impossible for card users to purchase certain items but all the stories you hear tell how someone right behind a card user in line saw them buy BEER and CIGS, etc, etc.
nancydarling
@suzanne: @cckids: The wait list for graduate specialties might not be as long as for general dentistry. And cckids, you are right about dentists being willing to self-finance for their patients. Most of them offer a credit card with no interest for 60 or 90 days and then an out of sight interest rate after that—assuming you can qualify.
I don’t know about other states, but in California the payment rate for Dentical, the state insurance system, doesn’t cover overhead. The guys I worked for didn’t accept it except in rare cases and often would treat old patients gratis rather than jump through the hoops the state required.
PurpleGirl
@Corner Stone: Sorry, I should have added language that I was amplifying your point.
I had a house guest for several weeks 2 years ago; he has a CA food debit card. When he bought food the register showed a code or something to let the cashier know that an item was okay; other things had to be rung up separately. The food came off the debit card, the soda got bought with cash.
Phylllis
@PurpleGirl: Ah yes, the “I’ve seen them buy beer & tobacco with it” canard. I always found that what would really shut them up would be to point out the store operator was also a party to the fraud, which could be criminally prosecuted. The response was usually a stammered “I..I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”
As for dental, and medical care for that matter, lack of access is becoming more and more of an issue. When I moved here to Mayberry 20 years ago, there were four dentists in the county, two on this end, two in the main town on the west side of the county. All four took Medicaid. Now the two on the western side have been retired and while there are still two on this end, only one takes Medicaid.
Svensker
@Corner Stone:
My alcoholic friend would sell his food stamp card to his sister, then buy beer and live on no-name mac’n’cheese or beans and rice all month. (He probably still does this, but I no longer hear from him since I stopped giving him money. Alcoholism is an awful thing.)
Corner Stone
@Svensker: I knew you’d help me out.
Thanks.
Jennifer
It is a real shame that this guy opted for pain meds over antibiotics – you’d think the ER doctors would have told him that clearing up the infection would have also made the pain go away. And he’d still be alive.
Of course, it wouldn’t have solved the problem and that’s the real issue here. But…that’s some shit-level care that would allow a guy who shows up at ER with tooth pain to not have the dangers of not treating the infection explained to him. For fuck’s sake, they use baby antibiotics – amoxicillan – for most dental infections. The ER could have given him a 10 day course of generic amoxicillan for under $20.
Mjaum
We have a word for this in Norway. It’s “murder”.
PIGL
@Mjaum: They speak a different language in America, FreeDumb, where words have different and truthier meanings. They also insist that everyone in the world speak it and preferably nothing else.
Interrobang
I can’t imagine picking pain meds over antibiotics. That’s a hell of a privilege check right there.
Why didn’t anybody make sure he knew he needed the antibiotics more than the pain meds?
Ignorance kills, and this is Exhibit A.
PurpleGirl
@Jennifer: ERs do not provide more than the immediate care for this type of problem. I went to an ER for help to get certain meds when I ran out and didn’t have the money to return to the private doctor. The ER could only give me that day’s doses and a prescription for two more days. What they could do was get me the appointment with the hospital clinic that I needed to start getting help there.
That they didn’t send him to the dental school is more of a problem. But then it is possible that they don’t have a dental ER.
As we’ve been saying for-profit medical care sucks.
WereBear
@cckids: Sorry to hear it; I’m in New York. We are somewhat better off here; as I told my mother when she was employed here and broke her leg. In Florida, I pointed out, they would have shot her like a horse.
Corner Stone
@Interrobang:
What do you mean? How would he have known what to choose?
Jennifer
@PurpleGirl: Maybe the ER couldn’t have given him the meds, but according to the story, he left the ER with prescriptions for BOTH pain meds and antibiotics. It’s pretty clear that no one explained to him the dangers of not addressing the infection. Or at least it seems so…I suppose it’s possible that they did tell him, but he was in such pain that he opted to disregard it. Tooth pain can be excruciating, as I know from having required 3 root canals in the past year. I was fortunate – only one of them was really painful, and ironically, it was the one where there was no indication whatsoever of infection. The first one wasn’t discovered until I had a painless absess so huge that I noticed it because there was a hard lump when I rested my face on my hand. The second was sore and caused the side of my face to swell up, but it was just sore, not excruciating, and, LUCKY ME, later in the day after I went to the dentist to start meds, it “resolved itself” in the grossest way you can imagine. But the third one, which was only a crack in a tooth under a 20 year old crown…by the time I got in to have the root canal on that one, I was really looking forward to the novacaine. It had only been really painful for about 18 hours by then, but it kept me awake a good bit of the night. If I had been dealing with that type of pain for days like this guy had, I very well might have made the same decision he did.
BTW, I’ve been paying on this for a year now, and I still owe $2500; dental insurance wouldn’t have covered more than $1000 of it even if I had it. Dental insurance as it’s known in this country is a friggin’ JOKE – by the time you add up what you pay in monthly premiums, it doesn’t actually cover anything.
Karen S.
It’s okay that the reporter interviewed a couple of doctors, at least according to the part excerpted here, but it’s astonishing that no one thought to interview a dentist or someone who teaches at a dental school or even a flack at the American Dental Association. This was a dental problem.
And, as Jennifer @78 notes, dental insurance is a joke in this country.
PurpleGirl
I’ve had impacted wisdom teeth and painful teeth requiring root canals. The first impacted wisdom tooth was way worse. Taking that tooth out was minor surgery and the surgeon had to give me general ananesthia because the tooth was rotting and breaking up inside the gum line. (Thank the goddess that happened during college and my parents paid for it.)
The doctors and the dentist he did see could have explained this and everything to him, we don’t know. Ultimately it was his decision based on the money he had, the money he thought he could get and what he needed immediately (end the pain). We don’t know what he was thinking.
And as for getting money from a relative — regardless of what Eric Cantor and Ron Paul say about taking care of each other, we don’t know if he had relatives that could help him or not.
Arundel
Terrible story. I can understand why the guy chose pain meds over antibiotics- tooth pain can be excruciating, second-to-second pain, you would do anything to make it stop. The sick tragedy is that he had to choose. What a nasty, cheap society we’ve become.
Jennifer
@PurpleGirl: I lucked out – my wisdom teeth were so profoundly jacked-up that I went in at age 18 and had the surgery where they cut them all out at once. And back then (1981), my folks’ insurance actually paid for it.
Bottom line here is still that this guy died for lack of a lousy $20. The antibiotics wouldn’t have solved the underlying problem, and it would have to be addressed at some point, hopefully sooner rather than later, but he’d still be alive, and Mjaum is right – it’s murder to let someone in this country die for lack of $20 worth of medicine.
PurpleGirl
@Jennifer: Yes, that is the bottom line. A lack of $20 cost him his life, his daughter her father. And that’s wrong. Just wrong.
Ruckus
@Jennifer:
I came to the conclusion long ago that dental insurance, like all other forms of insurance other than unemployment or retirement(SS) insurance was never intended to be anything other than a ripoff. Health, home owners, auto, they are all designed to take far more from you than they pay out. Yes you MAY notice MAY get paid back from a catastrophic event, but if you add up all the money you pay over your lifetime, it is a loss. One would be better off starting a savings plan at birth and using that as an emergency plan.
travis
@dr. bloor: Heh, I just spit out my tea. Fucker
travis
“He [Willis] might as well have been living in 1927,” Jirjis said. “All of the advances we’ve made in medicine today and are proud of, for people who don’t have coverage, you might as well never have developed those.”
Another 100 years shaved off, which should be around the second year of the Perry admin, and we’ll be in Galt heaven!
mai naem
This is pathetic. I would bet the antibiotic was amoxicillin which is one of the $4 RXs on Kroeger/Walgreens/Walmart. Can’t believe the pharmacist didn’t say something. Can’t believe the ER didn’t give him something to get by on. They are given free samples for crying out loud.
RedKitten
@Arundel:
This. A thousand times this.
You hear the right-wing scolds talk all the time about how your country has lost its morals and values. Nine times out of ten, they’re talking about sexual behaviour.
In my opinion, however, THEY are the ones with no morals.
To let your fellow citizen die for a lack of medicine and not care; to let little kids go to a school with no textbooks and no safety and not care; to grasp and clutch and count the pennies that other people are getting and to shriek in rage if somebody, somewhere, is getting something that you do not feel that they have earned?
THAT is fucking immoral.