Historian Will Durant wrote that first century Romans had access to dentistry, including “gold teeth, wired teeth, false teeth, bridgework, and plates.” Many 21st century Englishmen probably wish they had it so good.
CNN earlier this week reported some English citizens have resorted to pulling out their own teeth. In the land of the National Health Service aka socialized medicine, six percent of 5,000 people surveyed confessed to using pliers and glue to treat their own dental needs. Another three-quarters of those polled said they had been forced to opt for more expensive private treatment. A culprit is the rapidly decreasing number of dentists willing to participate in the assembly-line mechanism of the NHS.
According to an article in the New York Times last year, 2,000 dentists left for private practice in just one month of 2006. That might be expected in a system in which providers are required to perform in terms of “units of dental activity.” A former NHS nurse noted she’d worked with a dentist who completed cleanings in five minutes flat.
A problem for the British, as for almost everyone everywhere, is how expensive a dentist is. Rising to meet a need are companies that offer treatment packages overseas. One enterprise advertises that a patient, by going to Budapest or Prague, can save up to 70 percent on United Kingdom prices.
It’s evocative of foreigners traveling to the United States because their own country’s socialized medicine scheme doesn’t work as promised. Rudy Giuliani touched on that in a recent GOP debate: “If we do Hillary care or socialized medicine, Canadians will have no place to go to get their health care.”
There’s more than a shred of truth in that. Earlier this year a Liberal Party member of Canada’s Parliament journeyed to California for cancer treatment. Presumably with a straight face, a spokesman for the patient claimed the MP “thinks very highly of the Canadian health-care system, and uses it when needed for herself and her children, as do all Canadians.”
Getting back to dental care, members of our own Congress are profitably exploiting an isolated but unarguably heartbreaking incident to justify more government intervention. A 12-year-old Maryland boy’s untreated dental decay spread to his brain and ultimately killed him earlier this year.
Several factors compounded what happened to the child, Deamonte Driver. For some in Congress and the mainstream media, though, the storyline and conclusion are unambiguous: More government programs are needed.
Said Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-MD): “In letters and speeches, we all mention Deamonte Driver. We want to keep the memory of this boy alive. We want to make sure that life comes out of his death.”
So more legislation’s been introduced. More money’s been appropriated. More hearings have been held.
Lost amidst all this “action” is the pertinent fact that the poor child who died, like other children qualifying for Medicaid, was already eligible for dental treatment under current law.
The boy’s mother, asserts a New York Times writer, “believes their Medicaid coverage lapsed early this year because of a bureaucratic foul-up, perhaps because paperwork was mailed to a homeless shelter after they had left.” A Congressional subcommittee contends the “dental provider network available online was virtually useless to parents and guardians.” The subcommittee’s chairman said in May that “Medicaid’s inability to provide adequate dental care to children has been known since at least 2000 when the U.S. Surgeon General published his report.”
Take your choice: A bureaucratic foul-up, a worthless online provider network, a system that’s simply unable to accomplish what it’s charged with, or maybe another reason.
Regardless of how you approach it, the underlying problem is the structure itself. More legislation, more money, more hearings and more red tape won’t substantively improve the situation. Yet that’s exactly the direction in which Congress is moving.
President Bush is widely censured for vetoing the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). This broadly expanded program, which added hundreds of millions of dollars to increase dental services, now covers families with incomes greater than $60,000 per year. “Children” are individuals up to 21 years of age. In some instances, funds can be used to cover non-pregnant, childless adults. Congressman John Shadegg (R-AZ) points out that Wisconsin spends 75 percent of its SCHIP money on adults. People who already have insurance can drop it and let taxpayers carry the load. Illegal immigrants could also qualify for coverage.
Naturally, opposition to this careless extension of a program that’s already appallingly dysfunctional is portrayed as a cruel, coldhearted attack on children. In truth, it’s fundamentally another big step toward socializing medicine in the U.S.
Keep your pliers handy. You might need them in the not too distant future.
This Michael Bates column appeared in the October 18, 2007 Reporter Newspapers.
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roadkill1965 said,
I work in a hospital that is drowning in indigent care costs. I also received a 25% increase in pay for dropping my health benefits (my wife carries them now), so I was basically paying a 25% tax for healthcare anyway, in addition to my $360/month premium copay. Why are US companies responsible for the healthcare of their employees anyway? It definately makes them less competitive in the global economy. Answer: because of the pay freezes during WWII. Companies had to offer a perk to incent scarce labor resources to work for them. Well, WWII and the pay freezes have been over for over 50 years. It’s time to fix our dysfuctional healthcare system.
October 18, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Ouderkirk said,
October 18, 2007 at 2:33 pm
college activist said,
But one that (de-facto) neglects healthcare to the working class is considered a little barbaric!!
road kill..
I also dated a girl from germany and she could not understand all the pharmeceutical psyche drugs people were on
October 18, 2007 at 3:43 pm
PolishKnight said,
From the democratic party’s website:
“We will join 36 other industrialized nations in making sure everyone has access to affordable health care, starting by fixing the prescription drug program and investing in stem cell and other medical research.”
Surely, if the 36 other nations tend to have socialized healthcare and that’s the model the democrat party is shooting for, that’s what they are proposing.
The fundamental problem is the commie party faces is that the same causes they’ve milked and trashed to the ground for government pork: Education, SENIOR healthcare, even the highways have lowered credibility of government solutions in the states to an all time low. It’s not happening and if they tried, the chaos would bury them and the smart ones know it. That’s what killed it back when Hillary had a husband doing her dirty work AND a democrat congress!
October 18, 2007 at 6:23 pm
fourthwire said,
Of course the Danish socialized medicine network is too much of a national icon to close, but the mere fact that the Danish government no longer forbade privatized health care was noteworthy.
In fairness, I ought to mention that the Danish practice of “embedding” dentists into their public school system has paid off in spades.
By ensuring that Danish students learn proper tooth care and receive professional treatment during their early years, Danish dentists are increasingly without work……. since so many Danes have excellent teeth.
As my Copenhagen dentist told me, she APPRECIATED the chance to work on my teeth since for most Danes born after 1960 or so, the only dental care necessary were periodic cleanings.
So the Danish dentists have been doing themselves out of jobs.
Now that’s the kind of national “problem” that I can appreciate!
October 18, 2007 at 6:41 pm
amfortas said,
Joyanna.
How do you feel about universal health care?
Amfortas.
The population of Sirius Major is against it and I listen to what they say. I get messages. ( I am very well connected, Galactically, and they won’t speak to that Hillary woman). They don’t think we can cope, what with their digestive system and all. I think we have to just stick to ourselves for the moment and get it right. There is a lot to do.
To my mind it’s the **corruption** issue again rather than a political one. I have seen ‘National’ health care systems and ‘Private’ systems. Much of a muchness, frankly.
Things get better technologically and skills-wise as time moves forward and minds work on medical issues, and money gets siphoned off by pencil-neck, rent-seeking bureaucrats, rapacious professionals and middle-ages Guilds of Mafioso in white coats.
America has the best and worse of health care. Its basically super-crap.
More people go to Thailand for hospital treatment than come to the USA. We have to get rid of the corruption and provide care; provide good, effective (which may mean less financially efficient) service to ‘We the People’; organise to best effect.
Argue with me if you will but a nation has certain responsibilities to its People. Defence isn’t contracted out to Tony Soprano and Co (hah! Part of the Iraq problem again.) and there is a case for not contracting out health to Dr. Soprano et al either. Or Dr, Phan Fat Thurmaturanguwallah.
When the mafia scum, rent-seeking, parasites are cleared out of public life the particular organising principles will work, whatever you choose. It’s the Character of the People that counts.
October 19, 2007 at 4:45 am
CaptDMO said,
REALLY?
When you go to the “speciallist”, who calls for an MRI before they proceed, which requires one group of folk to image, another group of folk to “interpret” and report to the “specialist” so they might guess at which brand of “formula” to prescribe via. licensed “repackager” with protected access to
the RX at a cost determined by alchemy-tell me again how Dr. Welby’s skill set
has improved!
I’m sorry, we can’t fix your car because the on board computer says we have to
replace a modual that the routing computer says will take 5 days to get here (despite UPS, Fed-Ex, or the inventory of the local independent parts place)
Of course, you could just drive a nail through the thermostat. I can tell by the sound
of it.
How many “specialists” does it take to tend to a faulty electric oil pump in a municipal sized heating system?
Yep, there’s GOLD in them thar hills. And gum’mint continues to do the bidding
of big ticket extortionists as long as they can get a cut-for your saftey.
The LEAST desireable thing wanted in such a bureaucracy is highly skilled, versatile, maintenance free, and effective cogs.
October 19, 2007 at 9:20 am
amfortas said,
October 19, 2007 at 8:08 pm
JamesH said,
I understand that fraud accounts for around 10% of the trillion dollar private health care system in the US.
The article by Mike Bates follows a well and truly tried path of scare mongering.
Admittedly no health care system is perfect, yet the gap between those who can afford health care and those who cant is enormous in the states. There is a research paper which shows that if you are homeless person in the US your life expectancy is much lower than being a homeless person in Canada.
October 19, 2007 at 11:13 pm