Last week was a frustrating week in chez Mara. After years of messing around with cleanings for the old teeth, I finally got to see a periodontist for a gap in my back teeth. Please note, this has been an issue I’ve brought up for years. And every hygienist & dentist has brought it up to me, as if I have jack shit to do with solving bone loss in my jaw.
The solution, it turns out, is cutting open my gum & stuffing it with, uh, bone, I believe. Like stuffing a bra with tissues only the hope is the tissues will bond with the boobies to build healthy bone in the jaw. Or something like that. This procedure costs $3k. With insurance. Which is a yikes. And a “motherfuck, is this going to give me superpowers, at least? ” Because, yikes, and on both sides of my jaw. Double yikes.
I’ve been struck by how ridiculous the American health insurance & medical system is. We have outrageous costs for service & materials, yet we only talk about insurance costs. Coverage for dental and mental health are often discrete from general coverage. Why has the industry been allowed to do this? Last I checked, your mind operating right helps your body & teeth are a critically important component of eating, which is a reason to live. Bacterial infection in your mouth can have some serious consequences, RIP Andy Hallett. We can implement insurance reform measures but making healthcare affordable will require addressing the scale of costs in the U.S. for medicine, tools, personnel, materials — the whole shebang. I don’t believe Medicare for All addresses that except with the idea that we excise insurance companies from the equation. Stepping over the landmine of legal authority, dealing with displaced employees, etc., I don’t get the impression that’s something people are truly dealing with in their proposals.
No human system is perfect. We’re going to be retooling things for decades, as we should have been for all time past. I guess the problem is we have to cure innate selfishness so we don’t craft health policy that respects profit over patients, yet respects the rights of doctors et al to make money. No one will get everything they want but we should get what we need.
We also need to address medical outcome disparities for POC. I wouldn’t have gotten my consultation without finally getting mad and saying, “Look, this has been going on for years, why are you just talking about cleanings still? Shouldn’t you do more? What are my options?” I wish I was only talking about a few months and one provider. We’re talking over 8 years and 3 dental providers. This could have been tried years ago, when I had the actual income to do it. Instead, lots of “caution”. It doesn’t mean any of the dental offices were unskilled or that they didn’t provide decent service. But when it comes to offering good health action plans, advanced care options – they’ve all fallen short and I’m not alone. This shit kills people. I’m probably more forward about finding solutions than others and I can attest that largely, I’ve been recommended to be patient. Many times, that patience would have severely injured me or killed me, see also, adventures with birth control, Georgia & the blood thinners. How do we get medical providers to accept & overcome implicit biases? Maybe Mr. Anderson can weigh in with his valuable expertise.
We have a lot of work to do on medical care. Just fixing the for profit insurance part of it won’t resolve it. I’d love to see anyone running for office who’d make a stab at these issues. I’d also like to be a billionaire just so I can upend the entire GOP as my personal petty vendetta. So I’ll settle for landing some more VO gigs so I can make an action plan on this teeth bullshit. Have at folks. And really, what kind of policy do you think should be discussed for any issue at all versus how it’s presented during elections? I got a million of them, but I’ll save it for another long post.
Matt McIrvin
I had one of those bone grafts as part of the process of getting a dental implant in–I’d had a root canal that failed after about ten years, and they had to fill in the gap in my jaw before drilling the hole to screw in the implant’s socket. They used a kind of paste that was made from ground-up irradiated people bones. I did not inquire too closely about where the bones came from. And after they cut my gum open and put the stuff in, they stitched on a cover that I gather was something like pig collagen. So I was partly made of other people’s bones and a pork by-product.
The recovery after that took a while but I can say it worked fine; gave them a nice solid surface to drill into and the implant hasn’t given me any trouble.
And, yes, it was expensive, and I wouldn’t have gotten it at all had I not been rich enough to afford that.
Doug R
Even here in socialist Canuckistan, dental coverage is split off. Even with a dental plan through my union job, coverage was crappy.
Our provincial government promised us dental coverage, took a look at the math and backed off. Haven’t heard anything about it since.
Well, looks like they were talking about it again last year:
https://globalnews.ca/news/4757534/john-horgan-dental-coverage-health-system/
ruemara
@Doug R: Well double dog dammit.
@Matt McIrvin: I hope I don’t know the people involved. Or the pig.
How long did it take for them to recommend the procedure?
Matt McIrvin
Lots of countries’ universal health insurance systems don’t cover dental at all, for some reason. I’ve never been able to understand it. Even setting aside expensive things like this, it seems like they could work wonders for general health just by covering a twice-yearly checkup and professional cleaning, fluoride and basic cavity filling.
Matt McIrvin
@ruemara: For me… it was pretty much instant, the moment my dentist determined the tooth stump was rotting away. The cheaper alternative was to get a bridge–I don’t think they’d have done the graft in that case.
chris
I wish we had dental and optical in Canada but we don’t. Yet. But we do have M4A which does some cool things.
mrmoshpotato
Crazy talk! It’s not like a toothache can be debilitating.
StringOnAStick
I’m a dental hygienist and a former geologist with an MS degree, so my science background is quite broad (MENSA membership was automatic based on my GRE scores, but I didn’t bother) and I have to say I have been appalled by some of the quality of care I have seen, especially when I worked as a temp for 6 years. It deeply and truly pisses me off, and unless you know a dental professional, how would you know if you are getting adequate care?
Ruemara, ask them if you would be better served by seeing a periodontist who has a Periolase laser first. Rather than me explaining it, you can look it up online and get information about it. Only go to a periodontist who has one though, general dentists can buy them but IMO they are not qualified to use them or properly select appropriate cases. If you would like to discuss this privately my email is kitcoh at the gmail com.
MelissaM
This is an issue of mine – dental coverage for all. So much of good physical health starts with good mouth health. At the very least, full dental coverage for kids through age 20 or something, get them started down the right path for oral health.
oatler.
I’m still paying off $1600 for having some cavities filled.
Mary G
That Serena Williams almost died giving birth because her doctors pooh-poohed her reports of pulmonary embolism says it all. She’s famous; she and her husband are fabulously wealthy; presumably they researched and got the best medical providers available, and still:
Even the fact that this came out in Vogue and no news organization took it up before that just shows what a blind spot Americans in general have about the value of people of color’s knowledge about their own bodies.
mrmoshpotato
I didn’t realize it was that video.
?Get down, get down!?
SWMBO
I had my first dental implant in 1993. It was that or a bridge. They said they would have to do a root canal on the side teeth and put a post and crowns to anchor the bridge. The cost was about $500 more for the implants since I had the big molar that abcessed and swelled and shifted the other teeth away from the bad tooth. They did 2 smaller implants and 2 crowns to replace the one tooth. I had a couple of root canals that failed after that and had to have the teeth extracted and an implant put in. Now when they tell me that I need a root canal I tell them nope. Go straight for the implant and get it over. A failed root canal hurts worse than the first abcess.
I’ve had bone grafts with most (not all) of my implants. The latest ones they mix your blood with the graft material and it lessens the rejection rate.
Good luck.
White & Gold Purgatorian
Dental coverage sucks even for those of us fortunate enough to have good health insurance. And dental problems lead to other, often serious, health problems and early death, as you noted.
My niece had one of those bone grafts followed by an implant and it did not work out, due to an infection, I believe. She was out a fair amount of money, although the implant guy refunded that cost because it failed, but she still has the gap and some bone issues, plus went through a lot of unpleasantness. So, ask about potential complications and success rates.
In addition to not covering dental and visual problems, most insurance doesn’t do much if anything for hearing loss, which has a big impact on quality of life and mental and emotional well being. Hearing aids are very expensive. My 90+ mom pays something like $4000 per ear, and they don’t last forever, either. So far she has been able to handle the costs but I’m sure there are a ton of folks who literally have to suffer in the silence.
Raven
Welcome to Molar City, Mexico, the dental mecca U.S. health care costs built
Boudica
My son had bovine grafts twice…neither took and were resorbed. Now he’s going to have a procedure that uses his own bone tissue. Hoping this will take so he can do implants and get rid of his bridge. It ain’t gonna be cheap.
Raven
@White & Gold Purgatorian: My VA hearing aids are top-of-the-line and I guarantee the largest HA customer in the world doesn’t pay retail.
Baud
I’m an Animal fan too .
Redshift
@Matt McIrvin: We used to host kids from Belarus and Ukraine for a summer program, and pro bono dental work was part of the program, because dental care in those countries is pretty dreadful. Dental health is connected to physical health. The kids who got that care got fewer infections, and grew bigger than kids who didn’t. (You don’t eat as much if your teeth hurt.)
Sab
@Mary G: Didn’t Ta-nihisi Coates’ wife have a similar experience?
Chris T.
Clearely, that’s because teeth and the brain are not part of the body. Neither are eyeballs (separate glasses/vision coverage).
Cadaver bone, yes. I had the same kind of thing, though different problem origin. (They used bits of my own jaw too.)
Seriously, this is because dentistry and internal medicine came out of different paths in the distant Doctoring Past, but it’s way past time to fuse them back together.
Well, that, or have everyone have separate Knee Insurance, Leg-Break Insurance, Liver Insurance, Pinky-toe Insurance, and so on.
TaMara (HFG)
@ruemara: I had a shattered tooth extracted and a bone graft performed for about $700 last year. W/o insurance. I’m still debating the implant, they wait until the bone graft takes, about six months before implanting the post. My cousin is a dental hygienist and she sees so many failed implants – which are very pricey – after about 7-10 years – I’m going to wait a while longer to decide. Maybe technology will progress within a year or two to make it, a. less expensive and b. more successful.
Fair Economist
The disparity between medical outcomes for caucasians and POC is very disturbing. There was a recent study in employment discrimination indicating most employers aren’t too bad but a minority is outrageously racist. Based on that, maybe doctors are the same and we should look at differences by doctor to see if there’s a group of white supremacist killer docs.
Good luck with your teeth.
Redshift
@Sab: And Tressie McMillan Cottom had a similar experience, which she spoke about in a great interview with Chris Hayes.
Kelly
My wife had a bone graft in her upper jaw several years ago. Had to be done as the adjacent parts of her jaw were getting misshapen and the weak spot caused problems with her sinus. It worked but required strong antibiotics for a long time. Her digestion took months to settle back down. We paid out of pocket.
Yeah my sight, hearing and teeth certainly are part of my health. They’re a few more weird healthcare quirks we’re stuck with because of arguments had many years ago.
Jay
@Fair Economist:
many Dr.s are like Engineers. Once they get the one ring, they think they know everything.
Even in Canada, you have to be a “good healthcare consumer” and your own patient advocate, and that is speaking as an older White Male. Dr.s still discount my own experiences with my own health and medical issues right up until I force them to deal with it.
I am certain that POC and Women, let alone LGTBQ have it much worse.
btw, BJ has gone back to forgetting nyms.
Bill Arnold
@Chris T.:
Porphyromonas gingivalis in Alzheimer’s disease brains: Evidence for disease causation and treatment with small-molecule inhibitors (23 Jan 2019)
After reading that, I now scold self severely whenever forgetting to floss/brush teeth. :-)
kindness
Out here in CA the state started mandating Mental Health be covered by any insurance about 5 years ago. They did it because the state lost a legal case. Previous to that kids were covered under their local schools. Preschoolers & adults got nothing. I forget who sued who but the end result was mental health is now covered by your health insurance. It’s the industry I work in (health care). It wasn’t an easy pick up. If it weren’t for the judges the industry still wouldn’t if they had the chance.
Jager
I’m old, when I was a kid playing hockey, you couldn’t breathe through the mouth guards, we wore helmets, but no visors or cages. In my sophomore year, I got whacked in the mouth with a stick. Chipped my two front upper teeth and loosened, three on the bottom. I had a decent dentist for the era, he splinted my bottom teeth and did inlays on my front teeth. His work lasted until I was in my 20’s. Replaced one bottom tooth, redid the inlays. In my 30s, three-tooth bridge on the bottom, in my 40s, the shit hit the fan on the bottom, teeth loosened, bigger bridge, Lasted for a while, 5 years ago 3 implants on the bottom with 4 tooth bridge, rebuilt my back teeth. 2 implants on the top to replace my front teeth. I probably have 50-60 grand in my mouth. A friend has two grandsons on the USA Development Team. They’ve been playing hockey since they were 4 or 5 years old, never chipped a tooth, the new gear is great, Their old hockey player gramps has a 4 tooth bridge on the bottom and a full plate on the top..all from hockey injuries.
Ruckus
ruemara
Crappy teeth and blindness are not accepted good health.
This is a hobby horse of mine as well. If your teeth are shit or your vision is not working properly, your health and ability to work will suffer, and sometimes greatly. But every single healthcare system/program/insurance separates them from other bodily systems. Why? Because they are expensive. They don’t need to be but with so many not doing the necessary care because of money, they both get more expensive and put aside. Because I make over a rather smallish minimum I get no dental or normal vision care at the VA. But because my eyes have actual health issues not just visual acuity, I get regular eye care which does include glasses if necessary. But dental? Nope.
waratah
I would have liked to see what Beto’s insurance would be. He is the only one that mentioned high out of pockets because he listened to what the voters said.
teacher died of the flu because she could not pay the co pay on her medicine.
he wanted to add elderly care and said Medicare costs would be lower.
dental added
i don’t know if he would have been able to get everything but I would have liked to see the fight.
Bill Arnold
Worth a look (haven’t seen it linked yet):
Accelerationism: the obscure idea inspiring white supremacist killers around the world – How a techno-capitalist philosophy morphed into a justification for murder. (Zack Beauchamp, Nov 18, 2019)
Bold mine:
A universal Underpants Gnomes theory of change;
– Enhance the contradictions
– …
– Socialist paradise OR White supremacy OR Some other homogeneous utopian paradise
To be clear, can be made to work, if one creates and manages to implement a plan for the “…” step.
Barbara
@Matt McIrvin: English people have notoriously poor teeth, probably due to lack of fluoride in the water as well as suboptimal numbers of dentists and limited NHS coverage of dentistry. Don’t get me started on training dental therapists to provide primary care dentistry, or my actual dentist might shoot me. But a lot of what ails us is a set of standards for training that are so high we literally can’t produce enough specimens to give us the basic stuff at a reasonable cost. Implants are always going to be expensive. I have one, and fortunately I did not need the bone graft but it was still very pricey. And yes, I had that cover as well and I did not inquire at all about what kind of animal it came from.
Chris T.
@Bill Arnold: Yikes. Fascinating. (I resorted to skimming after the first however many pages, but still…)
laura
I have never been without dental coverage – negotiated by my parents’ or my Union/s over my entire life. A decade ago I started getting the you’ve got pockets and you should use this always more dental tool. Still, here I am with a pulled tooth, one I’m desperate to hang on to and an implant in the new plan year. Despite the coverage the out of pocket will be 6 large.
And when I went for the extraction I was told the reason for the blood supply loss/ bone loss was clenching in my sleep over the past decade – the decade in which I lost both in-laws and my mother to dementia and my dad yo brain cancer. So yeah, it would have been helpful if my dentist suggested a sleep bite Guard back when it could have prevented the gum fuckery.
Now I am not a doctor although I have played one at home so take this for what its worth – if you are experiencing stress that extends to your hours of sleep, could you benefit from a sleep bite guard?
Anyone else have this experience?
Kayla Rudbek
@White & Gold Purgatorian: yes, I had some very bad problems with dental this year (not sure whether the infection started in my sinus or in my incisor) but by the time I went to my doctor my face was badly swollen and she started me on antibiotics immediately, with instructions to go to the ER if it got any worse. The root canal on the incisor was a relief by comparison. And I have good dental and medical, although I should probably look at getting braces to fix the alignment of my teeth if possible. I only had a retainer as a kid and I don’t think that was enough.
And as for hearing aids and cochlear implants – well, we live in a world where CI users buy themselves spare parts on eBay.
chris
Sounds like America could use some extra cash. What a concept! Fund the IRS and collect more money. Who knew?
karensky
One of the great things that Colorado did as it planned Medicaid Expansion was to include dental care for Medicaid recipients. It was implemented in 2013./2014. I was working for Colorado Senior Lobby in 2013/2013. I do not know what it covers but there was a major boost in dental care for recipients.
Medicare needs a dental component. Are you listening, Liz Warren? I have
actually written to her about this. It would be a game changer.
Matt McIrvin
@Barbara: I always thought “bad English teeth” was just a stereotype based on their not regarding braces as mandatory for teenagers, the way we do here in the social strata that can afford it.
Jay
@karensky:
joel hanes
@Jager:
One of my upper incisors is an implant, replacing a tooth that was killed by an old injury (from a mandatory no-equipment flag football game in middle-school PE). I had to have a bone graft because my body had resorbed a portion of the tooth bed. The graft and implant surgery alone (not counting the crown prosthesis itself) set me back seven or eight thousand in 1998, because I have a weird bite, and because I could afford to choose to go to the most highly recommended doctor I could find in Palo Alto. My orthodontic surgeon elected to take out a perfectly good wisdom tooth so he could harvest my own bone for the graft, and it worked beautifully.
My daughter, whose teeth have been a terrible problem for her from childhood on, and who suffered chronic periodontal infections for almost twenty years, has had about an eighth of a million dollars worth of bone grafts, implant work, and prostheses in her mouth. None of that was insured.
mad citizen
@Bill Arnold: Interesting. Sounds a little like Charlie Manson’s Helter Skelter/create a race war theory.
Kayla Rudbek
@laura: I sleep with a custom bite guard every single night, as I have ground and still grind my teeth so much that I managed to put a chip into my incisor in my sleep back in the mid-1990s (which led to all sorts of other dental problems). At some point I should probably have my dentist make me a new one (if the insurance will cover it) as it’s starting to get a bit worn.
I’m personally rooting for the invention of a way to regrow teeth!
Uncle Cosmo
Don’t discount the typical Limey love affair with sugar. There used to be a Woolworth’s near Paddington whose shelf space was one-third candy – except during the runup to Easter, when it was one-half or more. Not to mention that no English breakfast is complete without a cup of sugar with barely enough tea & milk to liquefy it. Then there’s “tea” itself…
Jay C
I guess I’m lucky: since having to have my wisdom teeth removed in my youth, I’ve only lost one tooth (a molar), and leaving the vacancy til I can get around to getting a replacement (implant) hasn’t worked out too badly. Though until this thread, I had never thought much about what (who?) exactly, the oral surgeon had “packed” the hole with. As it’s healed up nice and solidly (4 years now), I won’t inquire too closely.
J R in WV
I have dental insurance, doesn’t pay for everything, but vastly reduces the cost of unusual treatments. Pays for standard bi-annual checkups and cleanings. I have an old filling that they will replace my next appointment.
But I have two joint replacements. Surgeon warned me that poor dental care could cause an infection on my artificial titanium shoulder joint implant. Because there is no blood flow in that metal joint, if an infection occurs in there they have to remove the joint replacement which means my arm(s) will be useless until they cure the infection and
And that’s how dental health care affects the rest of your body. Poor dental care also causes heart disease!!! but don’t worry about it… more profit for the cardiologist, right!?!?!
Now I need knee replacements — osteoarthritis is a hell of a disease — and the wonderful surgeon that did my shoulders is booked until late January! So my family doctor has referred me to another surgeon, whom I don’t know. I know and like the doctor who replaced my shoulders. They aren’t perfect, nothing is when your pushing 70… but they work, and don’t hurt a fraction of what the bone on bone original equipment hurt when the Arthritis finished working on the cartilage, which was all gone.
I’m not in agony right now, although I don’t have much confidence in my current knees. I’m not willing to walk in our woods, willing to go shopping for the groceries, etc.
On my way to town, walking down the steps, I found a turtle the dogs had dug up and carried up to the house. Slight injury to the left hind leg, which Mr Turtle had been unable to withdraw into his shell. So I stopped off at our Vet clinic with Mr Turtle. The elderly founding Vet of the clinic, and WV Veterinarian of the Year a coupe of years ago, took Mr Turtle into hand, said he would take charge, that they had lots of turtles in the back yard.
It’s hard for turtles to re-dig themselves into the ground once the weather gets chilly, they depend upon ambient temperatures to be able to move. He was pretty active for November once he had been in the car with the heater blowing on him for 45 minutes, but if you laid him on the forest floor he would be numb in no time. Dr B told me he stops in the road to pick up a turtle and set them out of the traffic. I do to.
Floss and brush often, it may save your life.
Barbara
@Uncle Cosmo: Don’t underestimate the impact of fluoride and teeth sealant. All of my children have many fewer cavities than I did as a child, even the one that loves sweets almost as much as I do. Cavities lead to crowns, which lead to weakened teeth that are more likely to crack in a way that requires extraction, which can only be repaired well with implants or bridges.
Mary G
@J R in WV: Because I have joint replacements, every time I see the dentist he prescribes an antibiotic to take before even a cleaning.
Miss Bianca
Don’t get me started on teeth, implants, and insurance! I’ve drunk just enough rum to embark on my rant about getting teeth replaced in the wake of a car accident, and how exhausting it was to try to get my insurance to cover the racy new technology of dental implants. (this was back in ’90-’91).
Jay
@mad citizen:
it’s been around since the ‘50’s but became a Nazi staple in the ‘70’s and a ReThug staple in the ‘90’s, now it’s a Steve Miller Special tied into the Great Replacement Theory.
it’s now less than two degrees of Kevin Bacon between Rethug dogma and Nazi dogma.
laura
@Kayla Rudbek: fun fact – my great grandmother on my mom’s dad’s side had 3 complete sets of teeth. She went back to Ireland after the 1906 earthquake with my wee grandpa while her husband and team of horses (Teamster who delivered kegs from the brewery to tied-house pubs) lived in Golden Gate park in a tent city while working demolition and rebuild of San Francisco. She and the children returned -with strong brogues in time for WWI and Spanish Flu quarantine at Crissy Field.
Back to the toll lack of basic dental care reminds me of a Charlie Pierce story of a child who died a slow, agonizing avoidable death that is an indictment of the American system of health insurance and the desire to enforce punitive social policies on the poor and communities of color.
Mary G
This was ??????:
Patricia Kayden
Anne Laurie
DENTAL HEALTH IS PART OF PHYSICAL HEALTH. I’d say this even if I *didn’t* have lousy natural teeth, most of which have been replaced over the last fifty years by fillings or crowns…
Jay
piratedan
I’ve always suspected that we have multiple coverages so they can all extract their own deductibles and all the insurance carriers are happy with the arrangements
Keith P
@Jay: So Little Giuliani is successful 50% of the time at his job of bringing sports teams to the White House? Seems like he should get paid on commission instead.
Jay
@Anne Laurie:
if anybody asks if it’s allowed by executive order or how it will be paid for, just tell them it’s a “National Security Emergency” and that “Mexico will pay for it”.
should be a good enough answer, unless you know, there are two different standards,…….
Anne Laurie
True as far as it goes, but thin crappy tooth enamel seems to be a widespread genetic problem among people with Celtic or ‘British Isles’ ancestry, too. There’s a negative feedback loop — if ‘everyone’ is going to develop cavities / lose teeth at a relatively early age, it will be widely assumed that tooth loss is just One of Those Things. And dentists will be trained to think of tooth loss as inevitable, rather than a (sometimes) preventable condition.
Dan B
RueMara;
If you want a billionaire’s attention there’s one in Seattle, Nick Hanauer, who is building a progressive organization. They are looking for people with good communication skills and doing some podcasts.
I’ve got a connection if it is of any interest to you. Look up Nick Hanauer first. I don’t know if Seattle location is necessary. I hear that trips on his private jet happen and probably time on his giant yacht.
My connection is 2 degrees separated so it may not be a shoo in.
Feathers
@Anne Laurie:
I know from the crappy Celtic teeth. One of my 12 year molars came in already having a cavity.
The best dental insurance I had covered everything 100% as long as you had your dental cleanings every six months. If you didn’t it was 80%, going down to 50% if you hadn’t been to the dentist in 2 years. I liked that because it got me doing the regular cleanings.
The other thing our system truly needs is a nurse practitioner level of dental care. Able to handle cleanings, x-rays and simple cavities without the direct supervision of a dentist. Dentists have fought hard against this.
Jay Noble
Simple reason for Vision and Dental insurance being separate – nearly everyone will use it on a fairly routine basis. See all the comments here. Where’s the profit in that?
I should have had an implant several years ago but insurance wouldn’t pay. My dentist is a rather practical guy and grumbled that while the implant cost maybe 1/3 to 1/2 more than what a bridge would, they were going to be paying to replace that bridge several times.
FelonyGovt
Dental hygienist told me recently my gums are bad (lots of 5’s and some 6’s, whatever that means) and I need some kind of “scaling” that will mean 2 – 2 hour appointments and cost $2K (no dental insurance). I’m deeply suspicious.
Barbara
@Feathers: Yes, this is what I was referring to above. Less populous states like Alaska have been at the forefront on this issue.
Martin
@Bill Arnold: This is an extinction burst. The idea that whites can start a race war and win is pretty much a fucking fantasy in places like CA and TX. And they know this. And if it got started, they’d lose enough white support to fall into the minority in at least half the other states. And that doesn’t even account for the white people like me who would take up arms against the fascists.
Superior weaponry only gets you so far. I’m not afraid of their guns. They’re cowards who cosplay as tough guys. They’re Jesse Waters dressing up like a black person because they wanted to be black. I’ll take them on with my shovel. I wouldn’t put a group of people doing this for shits and giggles against a group of people who are facing an existential threat. The latter will win every time, so my money is on the POC on this one.
Their time is running out though. More and more states will look like CA and it’ll be harder and harder for them to dream up fantasies where they come out ahead. This is their last, best opportunity and they’re going for it. Unfortunately they picked dumbshit criminal Hitler to lead the way.
zhena gogolia
@Mary G:
He was brilliant.
Volker and Morrison were weasels.
I feel so angry about how Vindman was treated.
?
randy khan
I’m a white guy (relevant to this point), and when I had periodontal issues, my dentist referred me instantly to a periodontist. I think it took two weeks for me to see her, and that probably was because her calendar was pretty buy.
Every time I read or hear about how women and people of color don’t get the treatment they need, it makes my blood boil.
ruemara
@Feathers: the 1/3 celt ancestry I have decided not to express itself in less curly hair but in thin fucking tooth enamel. Well fuckityfuckityfuckfuck. Blasted genes.
ruemara
randy khan
@ruemara: Like I said, it makes my blood boil.
Jay
Jay
debbie
As a person with a lifelong terror of all things dental, I am sure this thread will be giving me nightmares.
Jay
StringOnAStick
@laura: If I could give bite guards to the 50% of our patients who need them, I would because clenching and grinding in our sleep is super common, but the lab fees are high a d they typically cost about $600 for a custom one. There are lots of OTC choices now but if course they are bigger than a custom one so are harder to tolerate . I wish I had been pushed into one 20 years ago (before I became an RdH) because now I need 4 crowns on the lower front teeth and my upper front teeth are easily made sore, which will get worse when the bottom ones are armor played with crowns . I wear a bite guard every night but a lot of damage has already been done.
I once worked on a guy who had ground his lower front teeth down to 1/2″ long nubs.
Jay
Jay
Brutal thread,…..
Dan B
The website for Nick Hanauer’s progressive org is civic-ventures.com
They could use some POC input. They’ve got Jewish, gay, and woman down though. Plus the billionaire as well.
Martin
@Jay: WeWork is a NY company. If it was a CA company, it would be illegal.
If a Tree Falls
@FelonyGovt
I was given a similar diagnosis recently. The 5’s and 6’s are measurements in mm of how far your gums have receded above a particular tooth. Anything above 3 mm is bad. Scaling is a procedure where they scrape out all the bacteria under your gum line that’s causing the recession. Not treating it means bone loss in the jaw and eventually progresses to loose teeth in the sockets. You’ll need periodic, cheaper treatments 3? 4? times a year to keep the bacteria from moving back in and getting back to work.
I had it done for $500, (I have rotgut dental insurance) which included an expensive electric toothbrush. It was actually supposed to be $1500 with the inclusion of some special granular antibiotics. I think it was necessary and I’m not sorry I had it done, but there were things about how that dentist office conducts business that made me deeply uneasy. The constant upsell, the confusing financial paperwork, having to pay 1/2 up front and then receiving several nagging e-mails telling me I had to confirm my appointment or I risked losing my time slot… it was like I was a customer in a car dealership. I’m willing to bet money that some consultant with a MBA degree engineered their customer processing protocols. I have some cavities that need filling, but I’m shopping around for those.
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
You know, they were weasels, but I quite enjoyed listening to how both failed to live up to the Republicans’ expectations.
Just now, Colbert included a clip from Ken Burns’s Statue of Liberty where Vindman and his twin were interviewed. It was a nice reminder of what America is.
StringOnAStick
@FelonyGovt: The “5 a d6” are the depth in millimeters of the “turtleneck sweater of gum tissue each tooth has. 5mms and deeper means the anaerobic bacteria that cause periodontal disease can now reproduce in this deeper and now low oxygen environment. Your RDH wants you to have scaling and root planing done to try to reverse this. If you don’t have it done the periodontal disease will get worse, the pockets will get deeper as the bacteria destroy more bone, and the teeth get loose and fall out, plus ongoing periodontal disease means you have a constant chronic infection from bacteria that oral antibiotics have no impact on. Maybe she didn’t explain it well but you are right on the border of being able to avoid being a lifetime periodontal patient; once it is well established there is no cure, just maintenance of a permanent chronic infection.
StringOnAStick
@If a Tree Falls: If you feel like you are being up sold, you probably are because there is a subset of dental offices that are all about “production” and making as much as possible from each patient. The dental chains are the worst for this, and some are hard to tell that they are chains; the big up sell is the hint.
dentistry is expensive because the materials are expensive as is the cost of sterilization and there’s lots of employees needed to run an office, including people who do nothing but wrangle insurance companies (sound familiar?).. I use custom magnifying glasses with an attached light because I’m older and far sighted like most people my age; that set up cost me over $3,000, it’s one expense a dental hygienist has to get paid enough to invest in. It costs that much because there’s a lot of high skill labor in making those glasses and the design of it all, and because it’s for the medical and dental profession it is expensive. Using non-custom fitted magnifier a for 8 hours a day produces serious eye strain and headaches.
I make a decent hourly wage and even though I work part time the work is destroying my hands, my neck and my back so I’ll have to quit soon. Most hygienists I know are ready to get a new career within 10 years of starting to practice because of this; most dentists I know have neck and back problems. The job trashes your body and as a non-dentist, I’m not getting rich, just broken by the work; if I could convince myself that it’s ok to do a substandard job then I could work more years but I can’t and won’t. I’m lucky I have financial options but an RDH paying off a total college debt of $25,000 to $40,000 has to work full time and for a long time just like every other college debt for a career. My boss isn’t rich but he does well and it’s not like the money a medical specialist pulls down by any means. Then again, my boss isn’t a greedy high production dentist and we don’t up sell our patients, we just tell them their situation and discuss their treatment options. That’s the ethical standard of care.
CarolDuhart2
@Jay: That’s one reason why I’m suspicious of cryptocurrency. Unlike a government you can contact and complain to, cryptocurrency, there’s no one (or no one you could trust) if things go bad-like a recession. Regular money keeps some value (if only to buy food), and if things go wrong there, there’s always another better currency or election findable.
SectionH
The only reason I still have most of my teeth is proximity to a major medical school, including dentristy, and the gumption to go there for “cheap.” And it was srsly cheap. But still, not that easy for anyone.
This is a topic close to my heart. Because DAMN. Teeth are part of your body, and when they’re not working, that’s bad.
Uncle Cosmo
@Barbara: You’re preaching to the choir. My parents were brand name loyalists – Maxwell House coffee, Campbell’s soups, Colgate toothpaste – which didn’t add fluoride until years after Crest came out. By which time I had so much silver amalgam in my choppers I could pick up Radio Free Neptune when the ionosphere was right.
And I lost a few permanent molars to decay. Which had the interesting consequence that I never had a single problem with wisdom teeth – the tooth buds effectively slid forward & grew into replacement molars, which FAIK is their fundamental evolutionary purpose.
(Funny thing, in my early 20s I developed arthritis through my torso – hips, shoulders, even ribs – eventually controlled with NSAIDs & exercise – but over the decades the condition faded away. Contemporaneously, those old fillings gradually wore out & were replaced with ceramics. A major component of silver amalgam is mercury. Coinkydink?)
Barbara
@Uncle Cosmo: Yes, coinkydink!