20% of Floridians Cannot Afford to See a Dentist

Routine dental care is extremely important, even if the greatest majority of people disregard it.

When you struggle with a small dental cavity, which is by the way discovered at a routine dental checkup, you will most probably have the treatment covered by insurance.

Even if you do not own any dental insurance, the costs for a small dental filling can be supported easily. If you skip that routine dental checkup, the cavity will grow, and the tooth might suffer a severe infection.

Then, a few months later, you might have to go through dental root canal therapy, which can cost even up to $1,000. This is why routine dental checkups should never be disregarded!

The Florida Public Health Institute has released a report according to which about 20% of the citizens of Florida cannot access even routine dental care, because of the increased costs.

This fact triggers a huge problem, because there is a lot of money spent on expensive dental treatments (emergency treatments) from money of the state and of the taxpayers, for issues which could have been prevented if the patient would have had access to routine dental care.

The study has been led on behalf of Oral Health Florida, which is basically a public health organization made up of dental hygienists, dentists, physicians, general health care providers and other advocates of good health.

This group has also released a report last year in December, which analyzed in depth the costs of emergency dental care in Florida, costs which could have been avoided through routine, restorative and preventative dental care.

For 2010 alone, these emergency dental care costs totaled $88million, and there were 115,000 such emergency visits done. Approximately 1,3 of the visits have been charged to Medicaid, and the state has to take out of its pockets around $29.7 million on a yearly basis.

In Florida, the ER visits are extremely expensive and there must be done something to stop this. All people should have equal rights to proper basic dental care, so that they can treat their dental issues in the incipient phase, avoiding thus pain and a lot of extra expenses from the part of the state and the taxpayers.