Solving America’s Dental Insurance Crisis

Dental insurance is an important part of your protection arsenal. There are a number of people in the United States who do not have access to affordable dental insurance, making it more than difficult for them to receive the critical dental care that they need.

Many have heard of the 12 year old boy from Maryland who died in 2007 due to dental issues. Deamonte Diver had an abscessed tooth that spread infection to his brain. Unfortunately, the little boy had no dental coverage which led to the infection spreading and eventually taking his life.

As the nation spends time reviewing the health care crisis, it is also important to consider the impact that that lack of dental insurance coverage can have on our citizens. Deamonte Diver should have received the critical dental care that he needed and gone on to enjoy his teenage years.

Sadly, he is not the only child (or adult) in the nation that does not have adequate dental coverage to provide the critical services needed to avoid such tragedies. Seven years before Deamonte died the Surgeon General issued a report on the overall oral health of American citizens.

The information on school-aged children alone was astounding. Tooth decay is a major issue affecting school children. In fact, there are more than 50 million school hours lost each year in the United States because of dental issues. These statistics are even more heartbreaking when you consider the number of poor children who simply cannot get access to adequate dental coverage.

Oral disease is progressive and will get worse over time. Dental issues will directly affect the ability to eat, our appearance and how we communicate with others. People will lose work hours because of dental problems and children will evidently lose their lives.

Over one-third of the American population currently does not have access to fluoridation through their water. More than 100 million children and adults do not have dental insurance. This is more than twice the number of citizens who do not have adequate medical insurance.

Dental insurance coverage is a topic that deserves more attention. While the nation continues to worry about the state of the healthcare situation in American, more people should turn their attention to the state of dental coverage.

The rising cost of dental services is making it harder and harder for Americans to choose and afford adequate dental coverage. There is no financial aid system on place that will cover these rising dental costs and patients are simply left to find their own ways of paying for dental services.

When you consider that nearly half the U.S. population has a hard enough time meeting mortgage payments and keeping food on the table, you understand why there is simply nothing left for dental treatments. America is in the midst of a dental catastrophe that could lead to staggering numbers of illness and death if something is not done and done soon.

But what can be done? How do we ensure that all Americans, particularly children, have access to the dental procedures that they need? One solution is to offer a government sponsored dental coverage plan.

Of course, the healthcare plan has made absolutely no headway of late so this could simply be another dream that we may never see fully in place. Another solution could be to find affordable discount plans that will significantly lower the cost of these dental procedures and allow citizens to get the treatments that they need.

There are many discount dental plans currently available, but how do you find one that will work with your preferred dentist? These are things that will need to be studied in order for our citizens to get the dental treatments that are needed to promote good health.

It is not about beautiful smiles and having the whitest teeth. It is simply about protecting America’s citizens from living in constant pain and misery and potentially losing their lives because of dental issues that should be easily treated.

Finding a more affordable approach to dental care is something that the government should be looking into. American citizens deserve to not only have beautiful smiles but to live pain-free and free from dental issues that can cause catastrophic consequences if not treated properly.