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Killed by a Tooth

21 September 2009 Comments

Today was not a good day. The reality of Rob’s death just set in….friend/family/kindred spirit. Forty-eight years old, he died in his sleep from an infection from a tooth last week. The infection got into his cardioid artery and spread to his brain and killed him. An infected tooth. It’s the third or fourth incident of this that I’ve heard of, and all of them happened in young men 25-48. There are worse ways to go out of this life than in your sleep-but from an infected tooth? I have not reacted at all really, until today. And today it really, really, really hit me. The photo of the tooth in this blog is a really decayed tooth in general and NOT his tooth or even anything close to it….But it is a great visual of tooth decay. I know. My father was a dentist and I saw bad teeth a LOT. Mostly in the poor, and among those on Medicaid or Medicare, but still….bad teeth are bad teeth. And they can kill. and apparently Rob’s killed him.

Rob was one of the most creative, funny, sensitive and talented people I know. He was severely dyslexic, but taught himself to read by getting an old Corvette and a mechanic’s manual and learning to read so he could fix the car. A gifted designer, he could work wonders with interiors, flea market and auction items. He will be missed. He didn’t have an easy life by anyone’s definition.

What is so depressing about this is that it’s preventable. I can’t pay for the level of dental care I need. Neither could he. And we have/had friends and relatives who are dentists who wouldn’t work with us on payments, so I know that those without even those resources than we had, are in worse straits. Dental schools require wait times of months to get in to see even a student dentist, and then, the cost is still high.

I’m so depressed because I’m angry - angry that there is no system in place for those working poor who need a level of health care equivelent to pulling an abcessed tooth to simply stay alive. On the one hand we’re told that health care is not a right, but then Obama wants to FORCE the poor to spend the equivalent of a year’s rent on health care (which is iffy and overpriced at best from most providers) or be fined, or maybe later imprisoned because they can’t afford to support big pharmaceuticals, doctors, and insurance companies. Which is it? Doctors go into medicine for the money. Bottom line. I grew up around doctors and dentists, and it’s about the money.

Some do go into it to “make a difference,” (you’ll find them volunteering at the free clincs and donating time and services) but ultimately it’s about the money. I know. I also used to interview doctors, and it always came down to the money. Doctors are leaving and shunning orthopedic surgery in droves because the money is no longer there. Medicare and Medicaid and insurance companies are driving down profits. The cost of new technologies is rising and baby boomers with their bad hips and knees are now waiting months for knee and hip replacements. And now the government wants a system that will drain and hurt the poor more. What happened to competition and free enterprise?

Anyway….I’m rambling. I’m angry. I’m really bummed and really worried. And it’s just not fair, and it’s just not right.

amy59

A person with a good health insurance plan needs to have a "living will" if they don't want to be kept alive by all means necessary when death is immenent. If you don't have a "living will" you can bet hundreds of thousands of dollars will be spent on tests and machines to keep you alive if only for a few more days --even hours. That's something the uninsured don't have to worry about.
It is a shame and it makes me angry that an otherwise healthy person can die from an infected tooth.

stevendreamweaver

Free enterprise is what is killing health care for the poor in this country. We pay over 20 times as much for admin costs than Canada. They pay less than 1.5 percent for admin costs while the US pays over 30%. The difference is in commissions and other unnecessary expenses we pay for having middlemen (Insurance companies) between consumers and providers. At one time insurance was for loss mitigation. Then it became a business that had to pay not just for legitimate losses, but also shareholders and commissions. Insurance companies were once required to have a certain percentage of their funds remain liquid so they could pay off in case of loss. When did that change to invest those assets and focusing on finding ways to avoid paying legitimate claims? I wish I could remember the source, but I remember reading last year that several insurance companies increased their bottom line by simply denying all claims on the first attempt! They then started offering less for each settlement until the claimants became so desperate they took the settlement rather than wait for years that litigation would require.
What we really need is Insurance reform, much more than health care reform. We have great health care available in this country, it's just so expensive that too few people can afford it.We have people dying preventable deaths, not because we don't have health care, but because we have too many people profiting from every procedure.