OK, so I should be writing a paper on educational theory right now, so I will be brief and get right back to it.
I was thinking, wow, teeth and their care are unbelievably expensive. Feel me on this: My student dental plan cost $327, with a $50 initial deductible. This covers up to $750 of dental work for the CALENDAR YEAR. I have two teeth needing root canals, which at reasonable prices is $675 a piece. Crowns are $900 a piece. A root canal covered by my insurance is $135, and a crown is $450. OK, I can handle this, I thought, as I whipped my calculator out.
Uhh...not so fast. That $750 limit means about 1 and one quarter root canals will be covered, and that is IT. So this is what my dad meant when he said it was more fun to be a kid.
Then I got to thinking, how on earth do the poor care for their teeth? If I as a financially solvent (usually), educated, upwardly mobile, white woman am seeing all my savings go to my teeth, then how will the person who is on the margins (in other words, a lot of traits that I am not) handle such expenses? Dental health is no small issue in relation to mortality, either. This is a major public health issue; maybe I should research it instead of distant communities for my religion and public health class.
Finally, my thoughts on this subject are, stop calculating numbers, Jennifer; God has provided for you and will continue to do so. So I asked God to help me stop thinking about it, figuring numbers as if I was back in the 9th grade, desperately trying to figure the lowest grade I could score on my algebra II final exam in order to scrape by with an A (90.1). With God, I've never barely scraped by.
Teeth...who knew, such a thought, blood pressure, and spirit provoking topic? I see dentists as suddenly interesting.
I just heard on MPB recently that if you live in Mississippi you are more likely than anyone else in the country to have never visited a dentist.
ReplyDeleteYet another sad statistic about the Hospitality State...
I believe it. In JPS, there were opportunities for subsidized or free physicals (for sports team participation), immunization shots, and vision screenings advertised to the students year-round, but never anything about dentists. To contrast, at the public school I work in in Atlanta, there is an in-house clinic and dentist INSIDE the school building (that's the extreme opposite end of innovation.)
ReplyDeleteThe thing about teeth too is, you can't always tell how unhealthy one's or your own mouth is just by looking. So it'd be easy if you're poor not to go to the dentist till something goes horribly wrong.