USA -2016-09-30 / Community Print article Print Speakers spar in fluoride fight
Kennebunk dentist Ross Wyman (left) addresses Norm Labbe, superintendent of the Kennebunk, Kennebunkport andWells Water District, during a public hearing before Arundelselectmen, Monday, Sept. 26, on a question to appear on the Nov. 8 general election ballot asking voters in all towns served by the water district if they want to continue to add fluoride in the public water supply. Wyman supports fluoridation, while Labbe and the district’s board of directors are opposed. (Duke Harrington photo)
posted by Bill at
10:11 AM
1 Comments:
Dentist Ross Wyman is not seeing fluoridation success when he peers at decay free teeth. He is actually seeing socio-economic-status. Most US dentists won't treat Medicaid patients (government insurance low-incomed), Medicare (over 65 insurance) doesn't cover dental care and dental insurance doesn't cover much of anything. As a result hospital ER's are flooded with low-income dental patients in extensive pain whose treatment cost taxpayers ten times the cost of a simple filling.
101 people died in hospitals from the consequences of untreated tooth decay, according to an article in the Journal of the American Dental Association (ADA).
According to the ADA's Health Policy Institute (HPI), 25 percent of low-income children have untreated tooth decay. Untreated cavities rates for low–income seniors was at 42 percent in 2011–14, up from 31 percent in 1999–2004. In those same years, the untreated caries rates for low–income adults increased to 48 percent, up from 42 percent. HPI researchers found that 49 percent of all seniors say the number one reason they haven’t seen a dentist in the last year is cost.
Fluoridation may have seemed like a good idea back in the day, but today Americans are fluoride overdosed and dentist-deficient .
The remedy is to legalize Dental Therapists in the US who need just two years training to do work as well as dentists and who will go into mouths and areas where dentists refuse to go and cost a lot less.
However, organized dentistry, with its pockets full of corporate cash, relentlessly lobby against legalizing any profession that infringes on dentists' lucrative monopoly. Dentists prefer to treat the water of and not the teeth of Americans who need their care the most.
Dental care is impossible for so many Americans that Senator Bernie Sanders wrote a report entitled "Dental Crisis in America." that outlines the problems and offers some solutions.
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Anonymous, at 01 October, 2016
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