A story in the Washington Post last week is drawing a lot of attention as it reflects on the U.S. health care system.
It begins:
"Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died of a toothache Sunday.
A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him.
If his mother had been insured.
If his family had not lost its Medicaid.
If Medicaid dentists weren't so hard to find.
If his mother hadn't been focused on getting a dentist for his brother, who had six rotted teeth.
By the time Deamonte's own aching tooth got any attention, the bacteria from the abscess had spread to his brain, doctors said. After two operations and more than six weeks of hospital care, the Prince George's County boy died.
Deamonte's death and the ultimate cost of his care, which could total more than $250,000, underscore an often-overlooked concern in the debate over universal health coverage: dental care.
Some poor children have no dental coverage at all. Others travel three hours to find a dentist willing to take Medicaid patients and accept the incumbent paperwork. And some, including Deamonte's brother, get in for a tooth cleaning but have trouble securing an oral surgeon to fix deeper problems."
Merrill Goozner writes: "The death of Deamonte Driver is a testimony to the moral bankruptcy of these piecemeal efforts to salvage a collapsing US health insurance system. Medicaid pays the least of all the nation's safety-net programs, and, as a result, doctors and dentists don't want to participate. Programs like CHIP, which rely on aggressive outreach to find uninsured kids, inevitably miss many of the needy - especially if they are tough-luck cases, like Deamonte.
These programs are part of the problem, not the solution. Let's get on with the business of reforming the entire system. As the Deamonte Driver case dramatically demonstrates, comprehensive reform wouldn't necessarily cost more money, since a health insurance plan that delivers timely, preventive care will avoid many monstrous catastrophic expenses. "
Posted by schwitz at March 5, 2007 07:57 AM | TrackBackThank you for this much needed comment!!
This case demonstrates a major deficiency in our current health care system, and daily there are similar episodes that are not widely publicized, by no less catastrophic.
Peridontal disease due to lack of proper dental care has been linked with heart disease. It was also shown recently that people who suffer from peridontal disease have a three-fold greater risk of developing pancreatic cancer. We are spending billions trying to "find the cure". Perhaps we should instead be directing some of this money towards prevention in the form of basic dental care.
Lynne Eldridge M.D.
Author, "Avoiding Cancer One Day At A Time"
http://www.avoidcancernow.com