The High Cost of Fixing My Teeth

I am now the proud wearer of a new, all metal crown.  It covers the very last rear molar of my bottom teeth. So far back it can’t be seen when I smile. A poor little, worn-down tooth which once sported another crown.  Unfortunately it fell off years ago.  Probably didn’t cost enough.

This is not about teeth or – really --  fixing them.  It’s about the totally off-the-wall, totally outrageous cost to maintain an essential part of one’s body.

Hello Washington? I know you’re there – and probably eating your taxpayer-subsidized lunch somewhere with your taxpayer-subsidized, nicely filled and crowned teeth. 

So a quick reminder. Without teeth, people can’t eat.  If they can’t eat they get sick.  And before they die of starvation and malnutrition and fall out of the health care system – they can cost Washington, insurance companies and all of us who pay for things a great deal of money.

What set off this rant was the cost of repairing this one, afore-mentioned poor little worn-down tooth.  It started last April with the root canal, needed so my regular family-type dentist could build up the tooth enough with a core and post to hang a crown in place. Since I live in one of the most if not THE most medically expensive areas of our country – the root canal –performed by an endodontist who specializes in root canals - cost $1600.  Molars, should you not have had to find out, have four roots.

After a few months for my bank account to digest that, it was time for the crown. As I said it’s a metal crown. No room back there for the added heft of porcelain fused to the metal.  Doesn’t matter.  The cost, my dentist told me, was the same. $1250.  Add in the post and core, another $360.  Plus something called Intraoral-Periapical-First Film. An almost throwaway $32.  Total cost: $1614.

And grand total for the whole deal – root canal plus crown – a bank account draining $3214!

Now like most Americans, I don’t have dental insurance.  My union health coverage used to pay for $1000 worth of dental work a year.  That went bye-bye some years ago when medical costs began to soar. I could buy insurance myself but usually outside dental policies are so expensive and pay so little it’s not worth the effort. Even employees of giant companies with Cadillac health insurance usually get a measly $1500 worth of dental coverage annually.  At best it pays for cleaning and half the cost of a few filings and maybe a small, front tooth crown.  Medicare?  Foggedddaboudditt!

To get deadly serious for a moment, what do people do who CAN’T pull $3200 bucks out of their pocket? 

A number of recent studies have linked everything from heart disease and diabetes to Alzheimer’s Disease to poor dental health.  Our bodies are a closed system.  Each part connected to the rest of the parts.  As that old song “Dem (Dry) Bones” told us so many decades ago.

It makes absolutely no sense that dental health care isn’t simply part of the overall health care system. Included in our medical insurance of all kinds – private, Medicare and Medicaid.  As with so much of the mess that we call our health care system in the US --- we’re among the few highly developed economies without almost fully covered dental and medical care.

Therefore my bank account is now $3300 dollars smaller.  I don’t know what I might have done with all that money  -- fly to the moon and stay there perhaps -- but I do know that if I were a typical parent with my own tooth issues and kids who needed braces and such  – I’d probably be wishing they still made crowns out of gold – so I could pawn my mouth for next week’s groceries.