The Right To Dental Care

Generally, when I speak about universal health care, I'm implicitly including universal dental care, as the idea that the health of your teeth is somehow separate from the health of your joints seems self-evidently ridiculous. Maybe I need to be more clear:

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.[...]

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.

Dental care also has another function. Neglected teeth rot. Rotted teeth fall out. And toothlessness is a signifier, in our culture, of poverty and backwardness. It harms an individual's ability to get jobs where they'll be a public face of an organization -- and I'm not talking spokesperson, I'm talking Costco door greeter -- and triggers an instant devaluation of the individual's skills in the eyes of employers. And that's not to even get into the insecurity and self-esteem costs it inflicts on the individual, and how those costs harm their personal and professional comportment. It's morally unconscionable that we permit these economic and medical inequities in our society. Just ask Deamonte Driver's grieving mother.