It’s not often that we hear stories about kids(or anybody) losing their life due to inadequate dental care. However, the recent death of Daemonte Driver, 12, simply because his family could not afford dental insurance should have us all worried. Driver died from complications due to tooth decay. Yes, tooth decay. When is the last time you heard of that? You probably haven’t, but it’s happening all around the United States, and around the world. In Fact,

In 2000, the surgeon general reported that tooth decay was the most chronic ailment for children and that poor children were most at risk.(ABCNEWS.com)

Interestingly enough, Driver’s family was on Medicaid, but couldn’t find a dentist to treat him due to low reimbursement rates. Even with the help of a lawyer, Driver wasn’t treated until it was too late.

To put this problem in the proper perspective, let’s take a look at the numbers. The American Dental Association estimates that 1 in 3 American children do not have dental insurance. That works out to be 25+ million uninsured kids, and the number continues to grow. This compared to 8 million children without health insurance.

Unfortunately, with the sluggish economy and lost jobs as a result, the number of children without dental insurance coverage is sure to grow. So, how do we reverse the trend? On the most fundamental level, we must both increase access to quality dental care and reduce the often prohibitive prices associated with this care.

I’d like to say that I have a bulletproof answer for the dental insurance crisis, but I don’t. We’ve all been bombarded by media outlets regarding Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s socialized healthcare proposals. Unfortunately, if you take the time to read each of the candidate’s healthcare proposals, you’ll see that talk of dental care coverage is lacking. Beyond that, I have serious fundamental problems with the model they’re proposing(I’ll save that for the political blogs). Medicaid, is also not a reliable option for increasing the accessibility of dental care for children. In Daemonte Driver’s case, he was denied care by dentist after dentist simply because they were confident they would not be reimbursed by Medicaid.

The fact that the dental insurance crisis is growing at an astonishing rate is evidence that the current system is not working. If we had a solution, I’m confident(perhaps naively) that our government would have implemented it by now.

What are your thoughts? What will it take to make dental care more accessible, but at the same time drive down costs for families at all income levels?

Related posts:

• Get Your Kids’ Dental Health on the Right Track

• Free Dental Care For Kids

• More than 108 Million Americans Without Dental Insurance.

• Halloween To Avoid Tooth Decay This Halloween

• Why it’s a good idea to use your dental insurance before the end of the year