Last edited Fri Jul 26, 2013, 02:28 PM - Edit history (1)

it makes perfect sense.

although it is subsidised.

system. The system did provide eye glasses, but for years only basic wire rims. This is why John Lennon originally had to wear wire rims, and turned it around to make wire rims cool.

Funny thing is if you want those now they cost quite lot.

There would always be at least one kid at school in the fifties whose glasses had broken at the nose bridge and the glasses had been repaired with pink Elastoplast - probably Bandaid to you.

that era. Not the contemporary, but the nostalgia movies. There was always one kid...Along those lines, the only thing that ever bothered me about the great classic, "A Christmas Story," was that the bully wore a coonskin cap. The Davy Crockett craze came along a half dozen or so years later.

several friends in the service that couldn't stand them(the looks), and as soon as they had enough expendable income went out and bought a pair of their own style. Funny that style was/is "in".

I hadn't had to wear glasses until recently. I just spent 500.00 on a pair of wire frames with progressive lenses. My insurance (state gov) covered $150.00, which basically covered the lenses.

N/T

then I'm happy to let you dream on.

There are exceptions mentioned elsewhere here but for the general population its no more than subsidised at best.

When I needed glasses to pass my DL eye exam, I went to one of those 2 pairs for $69 places. It even included an eye exam. I ended up opting for the $99 pair of glasses, which were slightly better looking, but the cost was still affordable. Even so, vision care should be included, and the cost would not be that high, given the low retail price for a basic pair of glasses, including exam these days.

An eye exam and new glasses generally run me in excess of $1500. Been over a decade since I got new glasses. And I need some. Need some dental work too.

In the absense of having universal healthcare I quite understand why you think that they should be included.

theres also a vouchar

http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/Healthcosts/Pages/Eyecarecosts.aspx

I meant the population in general which is what I considered to be important in context with the OP.

I'm aware there are exemptions. Its actually up to 18 if in full time education , its only in some instances where benefits are received and its only free over 60 in Wales : not England.

There is also the issue in some areas of actually finding a dentist to accept you as an NHS patient : there is no actual obligation for dentists to accept NHS patients - it just happens to be fine where I live.

n/t

didn't know that.

They are a necessity. They are either on my face or on the table by the bed within arm's reach.

I've worn them since I was six years old, and needed them before then.
I'm extremely nearsighted and my focal distance is about four inches.

My mom could not understand why I always had my nose in a book when I was little. She took me to the local ophthalmologist and found out. My sister had perfect vision and I was really nearsighted.

I'm in bifocals now. I get a copy of my scrip and order glasses online.
It feels like such a luxury to have more than one pair of glasses at a time!

I wear contacts to my welding class.

I've had excellent service from both these places. My latest batch was 3 pairs of lined bifocals for $125.00.

www.zennioptical.com
www.goggles4u.com

Hubby got a pair of trifocals from our optometrist in Houston for $900.00. I may yet get him to try mail order.

and it is vital to any concept of preventative medicine.

Dental care is not covered under single payer in Canada?

I think that cleanings are covered but any cosmetic or anything else isn't---


A whole country has a meme

Definitely no cosmetic work but 2 annual check ups with cleaning at low cost - about $25 to you. No exemptions for pensioners whatever but assuming nothing has changed pregnant women get free treatment.

I suppose it could be included if they increased the NHS tax on both employers and employees above the current figure of c.26% of gross annual wages between them.

If glasses were to be included at subsidised cost they'd non cosmetic too - bog standard plain ones which I doubt anyone would want anyway.

I can no longer afford the cost of my former dentist.
Fortunately, we have a dental school nearby. I just began going.
So far the care is excellent and the prices what I consider quite fair.

the less likely you are to the system in the first place.

So yes - in the case of the USA it is likely to be dead and gone before dental is covered.

Dental care affects nutrition, pain management, infectious diseases and other major health-care issues.

I've always assumed that it evolved separately because people used to consider it from a mostly cosmetic perspective, but as you say it's really a particular sub-field of medical practice, and in fact has many large impacts on general health.

I've spent WAY more money on dental issues in my lifetime than other health issues. Just the genes I happened to be born with mostly.

Health insurance should cover the entire body without dissecting parts first!

i am very lucky to have as nice teeth as i do and i was able to skate by without seeing a dentist for the four or five years i wasn't insured, but i know not everyone is as lucky as i am. there is a sliding-scale dental office run by the county, but waits for appointments are long. there used to be a dental hygiene school at the community college and that's where we had cleanings as kids, but i'm not even sure if it exists anymore.

in my younger years I was minus a tooth for a short period of time and I remember how much it affected me, not smiling as much, hiding my mouth when I laughed - teeth are a very, very important part of physical and mental health

It's not like each part of the body doesn't affect the whole.

Heart disease the number on killer in the United States can be traced to poor dental care.. Just like eye care.. many people find out for the first time they have diabetes or have had a mini stroke.. (TIA) from an eye exam..

Not directly of coarse, but he had a tooth problem that got infected, and the infection spread. This was 25 years ago and the doctor at the time said that it was not at all uncommon.

My sympathies.. and it is pretty common..

I have heard that before.. that when the infections get so bad..that they have to do antibiotics first before than can take the tooth out.. I wish I knew the answer to that too.. why they do not provide dental care..seems like it would be such a cost saving thing to do in the long run..

TIA?

that sometimes during an eye exam, they can detect if you have had a TIA.. mini stroke.. Trans Ischemic Attack..how, I have not a clue..

myself. The old way of tyeing a string to a door handle and closing the door. Instead I opted for loosening it by wiggling it all the time until it came out.

Coverage, though, should include basic preventive services, fillings and should deal with infected teeth. Some other expensive services might need to be excluded, too, if they don't affect the patient's health.

I'm 68, for example, come next week. I've had three teeth extracted in my life, rather than go through the root canal and crown route. None are visible, and the missing teeth don't interfere with chewing anything. Mostly rear molars. The decisions were made on purely economical grounds. I simply could not afford the root canal and crown approach. Extractions are inexpensive, relatively.

I've never had a dental plan that covered "white" fillings at the same rate that it covers conventional metal fillings, on the grounds that "white" fillings are cosmetic. Which is bullshit.

I agree that whitening and cosmetic-only treatments shouldn't be covered, just like elective plastic surgery shouldn't be covered.

Like countless other people I suffer the repercussions of years of inability to afford dental care. There's a group here on DU who like to shake their heads and chastise people for not brushing/flossing, and if that were the whole story then perhaps such scoldings would be justified. But when you crack, chip, or break a tooth, or you lose an existing filling, then all the flossing in the world won't do you any good, and that's when the problems really set in. A $200 procedure that you can't afford can easily turn into a $2,000 procedure.

Years ago I had a coworker who underwent about $90,000 worth of shoulder surgery, and he only had to pay the $25 copay for the initial visit. At about the same time, I had to have a root canal and crown that would have cost (IIRC) around $900, for which I wound up paying more than $750.

It is preposterous that dental care is so expensive.

Just genetics, per my dentist. I always drank tons of milk and brushed/flossed,
to no avail.

my mother was on dilantin for most of her life- it killed her teeth.

Do they even have insurance for hearing problems? Hearing aid prices are out of sight. Cehap analog hearing aids are $700/$750 a pair for the low end. Digital can be $2000 and up, each!

Hearing aid prices, however, are way, way too high. Outrageous, in fact. Competition is needed in that industry, desperately.

I know there's a change in the taxes on them under ACA, but I'm not sure what else is being done.

I can hear the Right Wing panic over that one.

They'll be screaming about "librul re-education camps"

and went up to $12,000. It wasn't going to happen. I lucked out and was given a pair by a relative that paid $3,000 for them. They helped a lot but would have never happened if I had to pay for them. Capitalistic America sucks. I see our health care system real goal is to rape everybody into poverty.
-Airplane

You can still get the much cheaper analog hearing aids. But ya gotta ask. But they kinda suck compared to the earlier models. For instance, they skimp on the battery holder by minimizing the contacts. The battery contacts used to hold the battery door shut. Now there is a little tab on the door that does that. With the door open the holder used to hold the battery in place. Now, not so much. It is a loose fit to allow the tab to work. The batteries fall out when open. I have to be careful not to lose the battery when I open them at night to shut them off, because there is no on/off switch anymore.

while your wifes situation needed immediate care, what I have been doing for any major dental work is to go through the local university dental school.

while the work takes a while longer, you will get the best care and the latest tech.

I had two implants done and I can't even begin to tell you how much I saved. I cost me a 1/3 of what it would have cost me in the real world.

Just a suggestion for other folks here on DU.

Cheers.

Not to make you feel bad but getting my two implants at the dental school only cost me $2800. Mine you, it took a while and me having to drive 70 miles each way to get there. Total cost, I would figure about 3800, after everything was said and done.

With 3 lower right molars gone I was unable to chew on my right side. After a year and a half I decided to go through with the one implant - also I was worried that the other side would fail as I was using it so much more. I really am happy with the implant as I can now chew on both sides. It took me more than two years to pay the credit card back down.
-Airplane

Depending were you life you might be surprised, there might be one near you.

My conservative friends say that dentistry is doing something right that the rest of the field should emulate, but nobody's entirely sure what. Dental care is certainly more affordable than general medical care.

Plus he charges neighborhood people on a sliding scale (I think there's FQHC money in that?)

But I pay the full rate and it's not awful; like $80 for a cleaning and $150 for a checkup or something like that.

I think it's several things: there's no insurance, so he has to compete with open affordable prices. The DDS doesn't do much with a given patient because the hygienists can. It's rarely life-threatening so you rarely "have to" go to the dentist, etc.

I lost the teeth from the inside out; xrays showed vast amounts of empty space where tooth should
have been on the inside. I drank tons of milk; brushed/flossed, all my life, to no avail. Dentist said
there was nothing that could be done, just some people inherit this (and yes this happened to my Mom
and her sisters also).

The total cost for extracting everyone of my teeth plus TEMPORARY dentures was $5000. Our dental insurance
covered a max of $750 per year, with tons of ifs, ands/butts exemptions and deductibles for each procedure. I had it done in two different years, so $1500 was paid through insurance, but the rest came out of our wallets.

That was some years ago, like 6, and I still have only temporary dentures, which totally suck, can't eat much of anything at all, won't cut/tear meat, etc...and don't know if I'll ever be able to afford 'real' dentures that might work better.

my mother lost all of her teeth by the time she was 40, and after several years completely without teeth, got dentures.

I recall her saying that her teeth her just soft and decayed easily. I was a very young child during all of this, and have some vague memories of her dental appointments while her teeth were systematically being pulled.

I sincerely hope you keep on checking into getting permanent dentures that will work for you.

For what it's worth, when I lived in Phoenix a couple of decades ago, there were lots of ads (including billboards if I recall correctly) advertizing inexpensive dentures made quickly. Clearly, that's a market that needs that sort of service. But I do hope you can get what you need at a (for you) reasonable cost.

not only does hardly anyone die from dental issues (I know it happens, but it really is quite rare) but as expensive as dental care can be, it does not begin to rise to the cost of a lot of other medical stuff. By many orders of magnitude.

And I'm speaking as someone who made sure that her $12,000 of dental care was paid for before the divorce.

$12,000, while not a trivial amount, would not have driven me to bankruptcy.

It was a model for the nation.

Then he cut off ALL coverage for adults and now that surfer dude at the beach looks like he's from Ala-damn-bama.

Yeah, my dad is a dentist. Now I am in California and he is in New York. Too far to go, but he still sends me dental floss and any other samples he gets, once in a while.

omitted from health insurance.

Health care is not the program it should be. With Medicare you need a supplement, with BC/BS (and probably the other choices) you need a supplement for dental and a supplement for a health club. Four plans when one should cover this individual.

Mucho studies indicate if your teeth are in poor shape it effects the rest of your body particularly your heart.

Everyone should have access to good and affordable dental care!

K&R

And in fact it places a lot of people in terrible situations where dental insurance says something is medical, and medical insurance says something is dental.

My general health is pretty good. My dental health, not so much. Periodontal disease runs in the family and most of my teeth have literally fallen out. It's probably natures way of thinning the herd 10,000 years ago as you'd be hard pressed to eat much then without teeth to grind and break down the food.
Anyhow, dental work is prohibitively expensive for most of us and ought be covered like any other health issue. Not to mention the cosmetic appeal of having teeth versus not.

possibly accurate. Although, once cooking was invented, food could be cooked and softened so that those without teeth could eat and get the nutrition needed.

I once read a biography of Mary I of England, daughter of Henry VIII, and early on it said, "By the age of 21, like most of her contemporaries, she had lost all of her teeth."

We forget that the kind of dental hygiene that makes us expect to keep all or most of our teeth throughout our lives is relatively recent. Not that I think those of you losing your teeth should just suck up and quit complaining. To the contrary. I understand how essential good dental health is, but it is still a relatively recent phenomena.

Again, it's not the best option, but it's better than dying of sepsis or even living with excuriating pain, but most large urban hospitals/medical centers can provide extractions, and if one has health insurance, the extraction is covered. I discovered this through necessity with a tooth that had a fractured and accessed root (so even if I had had dental insurance, extraction was the only option).

I have dental insurance now, thanks be, but the costs are still insane and the coverage is poor. For example, I'm having two complicated orthopedic surgeries within the next 10 weeks; I will pay less for them (co-pays and monthly premiums included) than I did for the crown I just had placed. I would have paid even more had I required a root canal as well, but I dodged that bullet this time (and my dentists' rates are extremely fair and their work is excellent).

A lot of people probably can't afford to have it done at a hospital either.

Of course, I don't know about every insurance policy out there - just about 6 major ones. I have a $20 copay for outpatient surgery, and that would include an extraction of an abcessed tooth.

extractions or any kind of emergency dental care. I'm pretty certain my hospital doesn't.

Basically, emergency dental care, is not readily available.

Tell me about it. I retired 3 years ago at 63. So I have Medicare and a Supplemental - no dental. I live in a small town, Play golf with the dentist, so I got a tooth pulled for $75.00. hah I thought, I'll be OK. Then I had some bleeding gum issues, ruh roh. Went to the periodontist. (If you think dentists are expensive try a periodontist)
I had one small tooth that needed a root canal, ($808.00) I needed laser work done on my teeth to cure the bleeding gums, ($2,500). Keeping one's teeth and gums healthy is darn important, and expensive, without insurance.
My advice is to take care of your teeth and floss daily. The expensive toothpaste and mouthwashes are just hype, and actually harm tooth enamel.

They are costly and have high copays and deductibles and often you don't save enough to justify paying for the insurance.

dental problems. And it's not just poor people. Often people who don't quite qualify as poor put off dental work as well because of affordability issues.

What they should do is cover any necessary dental work at the discretion of a dentist. If it's purely cosmetic then I think that would depend on the circumstances. People with crooked unsightly teeth are at a disadvantage in many ways including in the employment market so we should find a way to help people in that situation as well. And preventative care such as cleaning should always be covered since it will probably save a lot of money in the long run. And yes, cover vision and hearing as well. Medicare and Medicaid should cover dental, vision and hearing. And people not qualified for those programs should have other options for coverage. And of course single payer is the ultimate answer.

One more thing. You quoted $200 for an extraction. Around here it's more like $500 for a simple extraction and more for a more complicated one.

We're planning our trip to Mexico for dental work right now. Dentists here are, and yes there is a minority of good ones, greedy fucking bastards that feel entitled to retire as millionaires in their 40s and protect the crooks and incompetents in their profession.

This post is so important. So true that dental care must be included in health care if we hope our citizens to have any kind of a decent life. I know so many people who have some kind of health insurance but when it comes to dental care not even the most expensive insurance covers anything but cleaning and/or fillings. They cannot pay the thousands needed for extraction, dental implants, crowns, root canals, dentures, fillings that would save a tooth, gum decay. They suffer, cannot eat anything but soft food, do not smile much because they are embarrassed. If this was only a "cosmetic" problem but it is so much more. A few states have included some care under Medicaid but most haven't.

Also true of hearing impairments which isolate and demean people; hearing aids are into the thousands now. The same with glasses; Medicare covers glasses only after cataract surgery. If we cannot eat the food we need, cannot see to read, cannot have conversations with our friends and families we are not living healthy lives.

"Make the teeth a part of the body". Literal translation, but it works well enough. Dental is not a part of universal health care in Norway, unlike Sweden, and it can be incredibly expensive. Unsurprisingly, Norwegians have poorer dental health than the Swedes.

Its partly subsidised by the government.

Learned something new today, thanks for that. It's still much, much cheaper, though.

Even with dental insurance, which I have, it hardly pays for anything. What it does pay for is a good portion of routine cleaning and x-rays but not much for anything else. I need dental work done estimated at $1200, of which my insurance will only pay $400. I know I'm lucky to be able to afford the insurance and make arrangements to pay out the rest, but it's definitely costly and will take a while to pay off the balance. My dentist recommended dental implants for which my insurance pays nothing. I think just one implant is like $3000 and I wonder how much of that cost is pure profit for the provider.

need to be insisting on. It's a long-term goal, but a worthy one.

but there are certainly other needs that require "up front care." But without Dental, Eyes, Hearing coverage...one can "go down" very fast even if they try to live a healthy life...and those who have problems with health will eventually deal with all this...that could make their life much shorter because of the complications...

Get it EARLY...and it does save money. Eyes and Dental can reveal early health problems down the road..but, it gets neglected. Too costly.

Hearing causes elderly to get "out of touch" putting them into contention for expensive drugs because they might be mis-diagnosed for other problems.

It's basic stuff....that might help save costs down the road...and lives. Yet, there's little focus.

or dentists who do work based on income or take payments.

Besides, we shouldn't have to. It should be covered.

But given the current situation, some folks underestimate the availability of free/reduced/installment care available. Just a PSA on my part.

I started a conversation with my dentist about this a few years back and she informed me that dentists, as a profession, have elected not to participate beyond private insurers. She was adamant that they are interested in maintaining profits for their practices and I was taken aback by her vehemence. Needless to say, since I was going to have her mucking around in my mouth for the next hour, I dropped the subject.

Even in Canada, its private insurance for dental or you pay it out of pocket.

when someone would raise this issue. Thank you for doing so!

I live on Social Security, in California, where everything is more expensive. A root canal here is like $800 unless you have insurance. I had an abscessed tooth this year and the American dentist I went to demanded to have my bank account info before they would perform a root canal. Medicare would have pulled the tooth. A front tooth. And replaced it with NOTHING--just left a huge gaping hole there in front. Medicare would have left me looking like Cletus the Slack-jawed Yokel from the Simpsons. But at least I'd still be alive (an abscessed tooth can kill you).

I had to go to Tijuana, where it still cost me close to $200. With the crown it came to over $500 there. I may have to sell my car just so I can pay bills. Despite that, praise be to Tijuana! I don't know how anyone else in this state, who is living below the poverty level, can afford even emergency dental work. There used to be something here called Denti-Cal, which was a part of MediCal (California's Medicaid system). With Denti-Cal you could get reasonable dental work done for reasonable prices (less than what I paid in Tijuana). Schwarzenegger got rid of that, and Jerry Brown has done nothing to bring it back.

I searched everywhere, googled like mad, there is nothing, NOTHING where I live that helps poor adults get dental work. Occasionally there are clinics but they have waiting lists to get on waiting lists. The only help I found is for children or for the homeless, both noble causes, just not nearly adequate. I live in San Diego and I really was not able to find any help whatsoever. If this is happening in a "blue" state, I can't imagine the untold suffering that is going on out there. America increasingly looks like something out of Dickens.

It should be part of health insurance and not a separate plan.

I couldn't agree with you more.

PC

I agree that Dental coverage should be included. Perhaps when people see how well the ACA works it can be added.

I also agree that we should be working towards single-payer. I see the ACA as a first step, although I really wish we could have gotten a Public Option. That would have quickened the pace. But the ACA is certainly better than what we had before.

Again, perhaps when people see how well it works....

who are driving around you every day...or who are failing in school because they cannot see properly..

The body is a WHOLE entity..with teeth and eyes too..

and dental infections can lead to or amplify other medical problems.

in Cuba - they actually believe in preventive medicine and dental care.

Not cutting everything to the bone or 'making do' with some half-assed attempt to placate voters.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

We really are prisoners of the past when it comes to the way we think about things.

So instead of a crown costing out of pocket .. $600 dollars it's merely $450. So even with the so called ''dental insurance'' you still are paying quite a bit. We don't even have a universal health care system in this country .. so adding dental to this is a pipe dream at best. Dentists are making out like bandits.

from a toothache, that is caused by grinding my teeth at night (have a store bought guard) not working and tooth is very loose, I totally agree with you. I have no medical or dental insurance and not sure where to go or what to do. I have some vicodin, but it doesn't help.

Sorry you are in pain. Been there. I found that ice--to my face--helped
some.

I had insurance. I'm not working, so even their lower payment schedule is out of my league right now.

would be at the dental school and ask for help?

http://www.wishadoo.org/about/

The woman, Dena Patrick, who started Wishadoo is a DU member.
If you PM me, I can put you in touch with her.

The rest of my head is covered by Medicare so why not my mouth? Medicare Advantage plans include dental, optical and prescription drug coverage so why doesn't traditional Medicare?

We've got universal healthcare here, but unlike medical stuff, it only covers low income families and pensioners. I had an emergency tooth extraction two weeks ago because I had an absess and I couldn't feel the pain coz it was masked by a far more serious condition I have, and I had to pay out of pocket expenses after my private health cover paid half of it. It did cross my mind that while I was able to afford it, there's many others that wouldn't be able to, though my dentist is a good one and when I've been not well off financially before he's allowed me to pay off my account a bit at a time...

isn't covered by most insurance plans, even in other countries, is that we haven't really gotten past the 1950's in our thinking about these things. Back then, only relatively rudimentary dental work was even being done. Fill cavities. An occasional root canal. Braces for some kids. Pull bad teeth, replace with dentures.

I am not slamming dentists. Dentists, overall, do an amazing job, especially of preventative care, for those patients who actually go to them.

The cost of sophisticated dental care, implants and so on, is another issue, and I'm not very qualified to comment on those things.

I can say that the mere presence of teeth in a person's mouth says a great deal about a lot of things, not the least of which is access to and affordability of dental care.

I currently live in Santa Fe, NM, and I have NEVER lived anywhere else where I see so many people with missing teeth. It's genuinely shocking to me, even after five years in this city.

First hats off to MineralMan for a very Original Post that is fundamental to what I coin as the basic Gaussian white noise world. Yes, dental care, and vision care is and should be part of the master plan in Universal Health Care leading into the next millennium. All politicians that follow this will be a success; however those that obstruct this development will eventually disappear.

My motivation to use the term Gaussian is because of the basic mathematics Americans have adopted from the old European ways. That may change in time. The white noise is a term telecommunication engineers use to describe the basic problem of cell phone connections. White noise is incredibly variable the basic problem in dropped calls.

The Gaussian mathematics used in means testing avoids the fair balance in real energy analysis. All that couples together, showing us that technology is not totally working for the basic global effort.

It is from my view not a Republican or Democratic, right or left, but a real human basic prolife issue to participate in life everyone entering by nature receive with facilitated help through governance all that is needed to exist in life.

The leadership in our time is so dismal pitiful hardwired connected to corruption and profiteering likely disturbs the fine tuning that brought human existence to where we are today. From my view what dampens my optimism in that if there is no God we are people one flash away from existence. Or, in God speed, one really tough learning period.

which has become infected. Some years ago--6 or 7-- I had a root canal done on the tooth.
Since the gap would be apparent when smiling, I'm going to have an implant to replace
the missing tooth.

Here's the cost:

$1262. for the removal and guided tissue regeneration (prep for the implant) done under sedation.

$250. for the CT scan done prior to the implant.

$2808. for the implant placement, done under sedation.

These prices do NOT include the tooth and crown to be done by my regular dentist.

We checked with our insurance carrier yesterday--ZERO coverage--even though all the above work will
be done by an oral surgeon.

Those costs don't include the $71. consultation fee when I saw the oral surgeon on Thursday, nor the $88. consult
to my regular dentist--who took x-rays--when I went to see him Thursday about the 'bump' on my gum that turned
out to be a fistula--pus packed--from the infected tooth.

The only saving grace? The drugstore charged me $.64--yes, less than $1.00--as co-pay for the antibiotics I was prescribed
to take for a week. Insurance picked up the remaining cost of the $20. prescription.


I lost a tooth--a molar--some years ago. Did not replace it since it was a back tooth and my dentist said it really wouldn't
matter. But, yikes! By the time this is all done, I figure we'll have spent at least $5 grand for ONE tooth--that I already spent
almost $1k on for the root canal 6 or 7 years ago.

I would like to see the age restriction removed from Medicare, folks pay their premiums directly to the government. Sliding scale based on income. If dental and optical are not already included, add them.

The for-profit insurance companies can sell supplemental policies for folks who want/can afford more than basic coverage.

It's not a perfect idea - but it would be a good next step.

I know my dad (retired 100% injured war veteran/Viet Nam) has basic dental and optical covered at his VA hospital. He is fortunate - bought a small house in a village within an hour of a very nice VA hospital and easily lives on his pension in that area ... maybe we could look at what they provide to veterans and model a policy based upon that. Again, not perfect, but a starting point.

escapes me. Teeth are the start of the digestive tract. One who is accustomed to using eyes to physically function, will find it difficult to adjust to not having them work properly. I don't understand why corrective lenses are considered "not covered by insurance". Dentistry not being covered makes absolutely no sense.

Glad your wife is getting better.

or having been covered by my spouse's, dental was always extra and out of pocket. I've known many others in these more recent hard times who've needed dental work to a point where it could become life threatening if unattended, and had to go into major debt. Having had braces twice in my life, (as a kid, and later as an adult with a seriously messed up mouth due to wisdom teeth and other factors) I hate the fact that this work was considered "cosmetic" and not covered. Currently I've reached Medicare age, and it's amazing how hard it is to find a dentist in my area who accepts it. We've, as a country; and, not surprisingly, insurance companies, have known how important well-maintained teeth are to general health for years. Not really surprising, with our general health insurance problems, that this continues to be ignored, and braces, last I heard, still equated with vanity plastic surgery .

KandR.