So a week and a half ago I woke up in incredible pain. It literally felt like a large truck was parking (or at least attempting to) on the right side of my jaw. Since I’m in the midst of starting my own business I have no insurance coverage (Cobra payment from my old job would have been $1600/month which coincidentally is exactly what my unemployment benefits were) I had no other option but to ask on twitter if there were any good dentists that could take payments (especially since my tax return is coming this week). I got what I thought was a good referral and called. “sure we take payments”. Only problem was: I had a full week to wait for an appointment.
3 days later I couldn’t handle the pain anymore (nothing really helped) so I went to a local dentist who could see me plus give me an xray for $35. The appointment took all of 15 minutes and I left with the knowledge that I had a cracked & impacted wisdom tooth:
Incidentally (heh pun intended) I discovered a dark side to dentistry. Apparently the dentist I originally went to is a “meth dentist”. Meth heads pay a pittance to come in and get a quick prescription for painkillers they can then use OHP/Walmart to get cheap meds to sell. Neato eh? “but they’re only trying to help people”. bah.
Anyhow, I notified the Dentist’s office that I was on unemployment, had no money to spare at all until my tax return came and was told “no problem we can work with that”. Went in for an initial appointment and was told that my top wisdom teeth needed to go as well but shouldn’t be an issue even though there was an added cost. Sadly I wouldn’t be able to get nitrous oxide since the dentist charges so much for nitrous, but no problem again right? If only that were the case.
Today arrives with much excitement as I know my horrifying wisdom tooth of agony +2 will be removed once and for all. I hopped a bus and arrived for my appointment only to be told “If you can’t pay $1500 up front then we can’t help you”. uh what? I was told the payments would be small enough to be manageable. If I had a spare $1500 laying around I’d have dealt with this weeks ago when it first became an issue.
Apparently because I didn’t have enough I’m not worthwhile of “emergency treatment” which is what the dentist told me I needed. Last I checked if it’s an emergency they’re not supposed to turn down patients without the revenue. Shows what I know.
What’s hilarious is if I’d been in Canada, the UK or anyplace with socialized medicine I’d likely have gotten in to see a dentist the day the pain started and then once antibiotics kicked in I’d have the teeth removed no harm no foul. Instead under our awesome capitalism based healthcare system I got to wait a week and a half for no treatment. Last time I checked the GOP morons always say that you wait for socialized healthcare and you never wait for medical care here. How delightfully backwards those cute little republican idiots are.
Funny how you’re only a person anymore if you have money. It’s never been a perfect egalitarian system but years ago you could count on the medical community helping people, now it appears in the day of the HMO that if you have no money you are persona non grata. I think they used to call that the fuedal system.
Ironically I’m pretty sure that this is how my family ended up emigrating from Ireland over to the US originally. They were tired of being peasants that continually got the sharp pointy end of the stick. Happily I learned at a young age to not get mad, but to just get even. This is why I’m going to find a new dentist, one with ethics and more concern for patient care instead of being interested only in money like the asshat I went to this morning.Once I find this new dentist I’m going to do everything in my power to bring him more patients.
Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go take my goddamned tylenol 3 and hope my jaw stops hurting. Also fuck you George Nowland. I just had to call the 5 people I referred to you and tell them to find a dentist that isn’t a soul soliciting pigfucker.
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February 17th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Actually, in Canada dentist don't work the same way as regular doctors. At least not where I am. :) They aren't covered by provincial health care plans, but you can get Blue Cross.
Also, in emergency cases, I've had to wait – maybe not as long as you, and there's also a cap here (sort of) on what they can charge. My wisdom tooth I needed extracted was $300 + and I got some yummy dilaudid the day before.
February 17th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Dude.
BTW, I had mine out w/o nitrous — just took a couple of Ativan and everything was hunky dory. I was awake, but pretty much had no idea what was going on. Good luck finding a new dentist — wish I could help, but we're on Kaiser, and my old dentist retired a long time ago (thanks to me and my 5 siblings).
February 25th, 2009 at 12:31 am
Before you go praising the almighty socialist system, make sure you know it well. As Andrea_R points out, either which way you're going to have to wait. In every country there is a larger number of patients than doctors (being that everyone can't be a doctor). In Europe, every single country has more patients to doctors than the US. You can throw Canada in there also. The US has the best doctor to patient ratio, I believe, in the world right now (except for maybe Abu Dhabai and some of those other oil revenue dependent countries).
So if you look at that number, the primary reason allotted for our number of patients to doctors is better than almost every "socialist" system. If our system changes, it is very likely we'll lose a HUGE number of doctors. Instilling the fact that, you would have still had to wait under a socialized system here in the states. The difference being, you at least had some options here in the states now. The 60+% of people who have dental insurance though, if the system is socialized, get screwed – even though they pay their money into the system, they'd all of a sudden be stuck in the line too… which in turn would defer even more people from becoming doctors.
If you have a general family doctor, as anyone should have, as is the practice, they'll work with you if you're down and out. It's part of the point of developing a "relationship" with your doctor. If you don't they can't treat you as well as they should anyway. The same thing goes for dentistry. If they don't know you, and don't know your history, they can't help you as well.
So my advice is, get your tooth yanked out by some gypsy meth doctor but then develop a relationship with your medical professionals of choice (which you still have) and get some type of basic crude insurance, it does NOT have to be expensive. Dental insurance is generally $30 bucks a month at MOST. Medical insurance for emergencies can be attained for $160 bucks a month.
If you smoke, you might be screwed, but it was a choice already made.
I understand you have pain, and since your story is a personal one and I've been in similar sitautions I decided I'd comment.
In addition, I've had teeth fixed for almost free because I was short between paychecks. I've even extended out payment once so I didn't have to pay everything up front. You however are praising a system you don't know much of (not that I know that much of either) and damning one that you've seen only from the Meth Dentist/Bad Practice angle. Everything has two sides of the story, you should give it a shot by starting off on a better footing next time.
btw – Hope your tooth gets to feeling better. That type of stuff sucks some kind of horrible.