Another preventable death

http://www.workers.org/2007/editorials/health-0315/

Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died in Maryland on Feb. 25 after bacteria from an abscessed tooth spread to his brain. Most reading this story were shocked. How could this be true?

While the acute complications of the infection were rapid, the factors leading to the infection were long-term and preventable.

Over a long period of time Deamonte’s mother, Alyce Driver, had tried to find proper dental care for all of her children. At the time, she was especially focused on finding care for Deamonte’s brother because he had multiple rotting teeth and was constantly reporting his pain.

Her first obstacle was that her jobs in a bakery, construction and home health care did not provide health insurance. Even though she eventually received Medicaid, it was very difficult to find a dentist, and especially to find a dental surgeon who would accept Medicaid and extract Deamonte’s rotting teeth. Eventually she sought assistance from a lawyer with the Baltimore-based Public Justice Center.

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this is truly disgusting and heartbreaking... "Land of The Free (Market Dictatorship)". Would it really be so horrible to spend a trillion dollars on ending poverty instead of murdering Iraqi's? Where in the fuck are people's priorities at???

I bet we won't be hearing about this on the CNN/Fox/MSNBC Axis of Evil....but we will be force fed Anna Nicole for the next 6 months becaus eher death does not challenge the economic system of the corporatists.

might not have been the massive advertising that hooks kids on drinking soda as if it were water. Some parents even wean their kids on soda, giving them a bottle to go to sleep with. This is the biggest cause of rotten teeth and is easily preventable if the obstacle of the persuasive marketing is overcome.