For Want of a Dentist:
Pr. George's Boy Dies After Bacteria From Tooth Spread to Brain
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.
This should not happen here in America. It should not happen at all, but it does happen and it happens in America.
How much longer will we have to wait? How many more have to suffer and die before the Republicans and conservatives end their selfish and inhumane hold out on this? If it is money they are concerned about, how much more money has to be wasted on patients like this one whose death cost $250,000 when preventative dental care would have saved his life for $80?
If the family could not afford $80, they certainly are not going to be able to afford a quarter of a million dollars, and who do you suppose will have to pay for that? Either the taxpayers through Medicaid or other patients through raised medical costs.
This also affects our medical providers. If they have to spend so much work and time on life-or-death emergencies, then they have less time to do their regular work which in turn affects us all.
One living child vs. a dead child and a greiving family? Try to calculate the difference. I do not think that you can.
$80 vs. $250,000? The difference is an enormous $249,920. For .032% of the total cost of this child's death, his life could have been saved.
Where are the fiscal conservatives now? Where is their outrage over this since money is so important to them?
Where is the pro-life community now?! All I hear is crickets from where they should be in an uproar.
They are no where to be found. And why?
Seriously, why?!
Is it because it doesn't fall on their side of the political divide? Are they against universal healthcare coverage simply because it is considered a Democratic or liberal issue? Are they simply afraid of higher taxes despite the fact that they would pay much less in taxes than they pay now for higher insurance premiums and deductibles each year?
I have already explained how it fits into pro-life and fiscal conservative ideology, so what are they waiting for?
Everyone should be for universal healthcare coverage because everyone would benefit. Most of the public is for it, but, like getting out of Iraq, the elected government refuses to listen to the will of their boss, the public.
You cannot get much more bipartisan support than what this issue should have if more people understood it and demanded it from their representatives in government. So why is it taking so long? Why is there so much resistance in government?
Why did this child have to die?
He didn't have to die, but he did.
We should have universal healthcare coverage, but we don't.
There shouldn't be opposition to it, but there is.
We need to make a change, and only through the will of "we the people" can we make that change.
Write your Representatives and Senators in Congress today and make that change happen.
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