On the UK Dentist Story

How pathetic. In response to the national outcry for national health insurance, a story gets planted in the US Media going by headlines such as: "English 'pull own teeth' as dental service decays".

I am sure the rate of self-performed dentistry in the U.S. is a lot higher than in the U.K. Only, the U.S. government has no incentive to do such a study as was done in the UK.


As I understand it, what has happened in the US and in the UK, since about 10-20 years ago, modern dentistry had been a great success in cutting down on stuff that historically plagued teeth (cavities, I suppose) and that for a period of time it looked like much fewer dentists would be needed (witness the closing of dental schools in the US during the late '80's and 90's. ).

In the UK, they recognized that great success and created a new contract with dentists to cut down on the number of patients Dentists had to see.

In the US, the dentistry field recreated itself, doing lots of cosmetic dentistry (to make money).

In the UK, the new contract apparently backfired in unanticipated ways (yes, you always get those with government programs). But all in all it seems a temporary situation in Britain until they re-do the new contract. In the meantime, if you have enough money in Britain, you can still get dental work done, just like in the US.

References:
UK Story on Dental Care Problem

Dental Care Crisis in United States

Health Care, Government, Trust

Gotta hand it to Michael Moore for knowing how to put it. I got a great e-mail from him today. Here's an excerpt:

And all of the media should start saying how much it costs to go to a doctor in these other top industrialized countries: Nothing. Zip. It's FREE. Don't patronize Americans by saying, "Well, it's not free -- they pay for it with taxes!" Yes, we know that. Just like we know that we drive down a city street for FREE -- even though we paid for that street with our taxes. The street is FREE, the book at the library is FREE, if your house catches on fire, the fire department will come and put it out for FREE, and if someone snatches your purse, the police officer will chase down the culprit and bring your purse back to you -- AND HE WON'T CHARGE YOU A DIME FROM THAT PURSE!

These are all free services, collectively socialized and paid for with our tax dollars. To argue that health care -- a life and death issue for many -- should not be considered in the same league is ludicrous and archaic. And trust me, once you add up what you pay for out-of-pocket in premiums, deductibles, co-pays, overpriced medicines, and treatments that aren't covered (not to mention all the other things we pay for like college education, day care and other services that many countries provide for at little or no cost), we, as Americans, are paying far more than the Canadians or Brits or French are paying in taxes. We just don't call these things taxes, but that's exactly what they are.

And when he was on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart had a zinger about how Americans are find about trusting the Government when it comes to killing people (Military), but not when it comes to Health Care.

It also occurs to me a similar comparison could be made about how Republicans stress that those "Evil" Corporations are in fact run by us, the people, since so many Americans own stock (never mind that the 50% level reached after 401k's took off is deceptive because something like 99% of the dollar value of all stock is owned by 1% of the people. That is, 49 out of that 50% own miniscule amounts of stock that has comparatively no voting power in the corporation). Whenever a Republican mentions that factoid (it resembled a fact), quickly point out that the same is true with our Government, although in that case we all have EQUAL say, not based on how much money we inherited.

Related: More Americans May Own Stock, But Many Live On Financial Edge by Froma Harrop