By Zach Krings
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – With general practitioners hogging the spotlight in the current health care reform bill, it would seem as though others in the health professions have fallen by the wayside. If we are to truly become one nation with health care for all, then we shouldn’t brush off our oral health.
Unfortunately, this is something that many have done, according to Dr. Carter Hagerman, a Flagstaff dentist. Due to high costs and limited availability of dental health plans, many Americans have remained uninsured. A 2004 estimate by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics calculated that more than 100 million Americans are without dental insurance.
“You can’t buy [dental insurance] as an individual,” said Dr. Richard Shannon, also a Flagstaff dentist. “You can only buy it through a group. Well, for the most part. Individuals can buy some of these really second- and third-rate policies, but they hardly make economic sense as an individual.”
With nearly a third of the U.S. population lacking dental insurance, many diseases such as leukemia, anemia, and Crohn’s disease go unnoticed until it’s too late. These are just a few of the diseases that exhibit oral symptoms that can be detected during an annual oral exam. Because many diseases have oral manifestations, the American Dental Association has stated that oral health is a crucial component in the general health and well-being of all individuals.
In the next year alone, 35,000 people will be diagnosed with oral cancer, which is as common as leukemia, and claims more lives annually than melanoma or cervical cancer. Of these 35,000, nearly 8,000 will die, or about one person per hour. If more individuals had access to dental insurance, these numbers should begin to decline.
With the current health care bill, congress has proposed to provide coverage to those 21 and younger, and reduced rates to others. Hagerman said that if the government is going to take over dentistry as it is medicine, then fees are going to be cut in order to provide coverage to this population.
“Our fees can be cut by 10 to 15 percent and we’d be OK,” said Hagerman. “But if [the government] cuts them 40 to 50 percent, then that’s our overhead. We’re not making any money, so we’re forced to cut costs somewhere else like materials, and cheaper labor, and the quality of work is going to go down significantly.”
If costs are sacrificed, then dentists will have to start getting their materials from places such as China, where products are cheap and quality is subpar compared to the U.S.
Shannon refers to this cost cutting as “mismanaged care.” According to him, mismanaged care occurs when costs are reduced and quality decreases instead of increases, as it is intended to do with managed care. When costs and quality decrease, Shannon believes that patient care and patient-provider relationships are negatively impacted.
“When patient care suffers, relationships suffer,” said Shannon. “Quality of care and compassion are what matter.”
