During my recent pregnancy I cracked two molars, midwives and dentist told me nonchalantly: “One tooth per child, so that’s pretty much normal.” And I am also in the lucky position to have health insurance and can afford to pay the rest by myself without endangering my living.

So every know-it-all-better bozo can go chew some rocks.

This is a different practice from in Belgium. My dentist (to whom I go about once a year, having had good teeth until now and hopefully in the future) has never taken x-rays. Nor has my wife ever been x-rayed, and she had plenty of tooth problems and consulted different dentists.

In Belgium, each person belongs to a ‘mutuelle’, there are 5 of them. Each mutuelle offers basic medical insurance. For extra, you can take out additional insurances. You are required to choose one of the mutuelles, no exception. Children are insured via their parents. If you work, a smallish part of your pay check goes to the fund.
OTOH, when you actually visit a doctor, need medicine, go to the dentist, need glasses, etc, you pay only a fraction of the full costs. The mutuelle steps in and covers most.

I had a really hard time understanding all this fear of US people going to the doctor because you probably won’t be able to pay it until I read this and previous entries. Now I too am thinking that I have been lucky without really knowing it.

I’m currently employed. I currently have health insurance through my husband’s employer. Neither of us has dental coverage. I’m currently avoiding the dental visit I’m due for because I need x-rays, and do you know how much that shit costs without insurance?

Gah.

And I said no thanks.

Because, if he found something, something big an expensive, a) I probably couldn’t afford to have it fixed right now and b) I probably will never have it covered by insurance because it would officially be a “pre-existing condition.”

Until me or my partner get a job of some kind that offers dental with partner benefit, I am playing the odds that everything’s fine.

It probably will be, but I shouldn’t have to gamble. No one should.

I’m going to sit here a moment and thank my lucky stars that my parents had good jobs and insurance (and that I only spent a couple of years without insurance after going off their plan), because it would have been pretty awful otherwise.

I don’t know details and am not an expert, but it might help MWT@ #38 to hear this: my sister was told by her HR person, at her exit interview, that COBRA can be taken retroactively — that is, you can have a health problem that would make it worth having paid the COBRA, and then make the decision to go back and do so. I’m not sure how far into the COBRA coverage period that extends, or how it actually works, but it’s worth looking into.

I hate dealing with health insurance hoops/paperwork, but I realize that’s a headache I’m lucky to have, compared with some others. Like you, John, I find myself feeling lucky that my partner has a job with good benefits. And that my parents are covered by Medicare and good supplemental insurance, since Dad’s cancer treatment isn’t cheap. And while I won’t comment on politics here, I will say that in regards to these issues, for me, “the personal is political” (Carol Hanisch). <–Attribution! See how easy?

A cracked tooth = pure and unadulterated non-joy. It happened to me twice, both times while I was eating (I’m wary of whole grain bread, now), and it’s unnerving. No pun intended. The sudden “crack” sound and sensation of something coming appart in your mouth… And then, pain. Not a lot at first, but it soon makes that dentist visit a happy prospect indeed.

Same thing happened to me a couple of years ago, though fortunately only once, and I got in to see my dentist the next day. But he told me I’ll probably need a crown someday, and although I have dental coverage through school right now, I don’t think it’ll cover that.

I just don’t chew with the right side of my mouth anymore.

(And I’m Canadian – I want dentistry to be covered by OHIP even more than vision-care.)

The infuriating part is that I’ve always taken care of my teeth, but still get a lot of teeth problems, courtesy of the bad genetics that plague a part of my family.

Called my dentist, he said, “hey–I close in 15 minutes but no one’s here, come on over”. I went over, he cleaned the hole, packed it in that fancy dancy new UV hardening epoxy resin stuff, and I was done in 20 minutes.

And it cost me the equivalent of $8.

I am a HAPPY participant in the national healthcare plan. I read some American expat’s blog where he hated the “loss of freedom” caused by being legally required to pay into it, and I knew, KNEW, that some Americans truly are crazy. I ain’t NEVER going back to the health insurance terrors. Nope.