Another Reason We Need Health Care Reform

A year ago, I had some leftover from an old dental abscess cleaned out. Unfortunately, the x-ray didn't show a small side channel that the dentist missed and the abscess took off before I realized what was happening. When the abscess started getting into my tongue and going down my throat, I called my dentist group on the weekend and quickly got some antibiotics. I saw my dentist on Monday and he took one look at my throat and prescribed something stronger. In a couple of days, I was fine though there was some minor damage to the muscles in my tongue that took about three months to heal. Although I have some medical and dental insurance, it was actually fairly cheap medicine but there are people in our country who hesitate to spend twenty to eighty dollars when they have other expenses to deal with.

Susie of Suburban Guerilla points to a sad story on MSNBC:

WASHINGTON - Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died of a toothache Sunday.

A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him.

If his mother had been insured.

The boy died when his tooth infection spread into his brain. Keep in mind that there are many times when children are not treated early enough, but they manage to survive, and are physically damaged by the results. These incidents of medical breakdowns are not that rare. For lack of insurance for a tooth extraction (and antibiotics?), Deamonte Driver required an expensive brain surgery that was unable to save him. This is evidence of a broken health care system and many children have no choice but to endure such a system.

It's time for our health care system to be fixed. Americans should stop pretending that the Republicans will ever do anything about it. At least not the Republican Party as it now exists, dominated my right wingers who seem bent on taking the country backwards. If we're the greatest country in the world, we need to act like it.