"A 24-year-old Cincinnati father died from a tooth infection this week because he couldn't afford his medication, offering a sobering reminder of the importance of oral health and the number of people without access to dental or health care.
According to NBC affiliate WLWT, Kyle Willis' wisdom tooth started hurting two weeks ago. When dentists told him it needed to be pulled, he decided to forgo the procedure, because he was unemployed and had no health insurance.
When his face started swelling and his head began to ache, Willis went to the emergency room, where he received prescriptions for antibiotics and pain medications. Willis couldn't afford both, so he chose the pain medications.
The tooth infection spread, causing his brain to swell. He died Tuesday.
Calls to Willis' family were not immediately returned. University Hospital in Cincinnati, where Willis was admitted, did not comment, citing federal privacy laws.
"People don't realize that dental disease can cause serious illness," said Dr. Irvin Silverstein, a dentist at the University of California at San Diego. "The problems are not just cosmetic. Many people die from dental disease."
Tooth maladies are what wiped out the cavemen--the diet was good, but without a toothbrush and floss, you can lose a whole species, and eating grains didn't help matters. As you read above, it took only 2 weeks for one man to go--now imagine a whole tribe of cavepeople without access to the lowly toothbrush, toothpaste, and floss, and you know why some sub-species died out altogether.
"Willis' story is not unique. In 2007, 12-year-old Deamonte Driver also died when a tooth infection spread to his brain. The Maryland boy underwent two operations and six weeks of hospital care, totaling $250,000. Doctors said a routine $80 tooth extraction could have saved his life. His family was uninsured and had recently lost its Medicaid benefits, keeping Deamonte from having dental surgery.
"When people are unemployed or don't have insurance, where do they go? What do they do?" Silverstein said. "People end up dying, and these are the most treatable, preventable diseases in the world."
Getting access to dental care is particularly tough for low-income adults and children, and it's getting tougher as the economy worsens. In April, the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that 33 percent of people surveyed skipped dental care or dental checkups because they couldn't afford them. A 2003 report by the U.S. Surgeon General found that 108 million Americans had no dental insurance, nearly 2.5 times the number who had no health insurance.
Trips to the dentist aren't the only expenses hard-up Americans are skipping. An August report by the Commonwealth Fund found that 72 percent of people who lost their health insurance when they lost their jobs said they skipped needed health care or did not fill prescriptions because of cost.
"People want to believe there's a safety net that catches all of these people, and there isn't," said Dr. Glenn Stream, president-elect of the American Academy of Family Physicians. He noted that it is often young men who are the most likely to lack health coverage.
Dr. Jim Jirjis, director of general internal medicine at Vanderbilt University, said people, like Willis, without access to care often die of conditions that were much more common decades ago.
"He [Willis] might as well have been living in 1927," Jirjis said. "All of the advances we've made in medicine today and are proud of, for people who don't have coverage, you might as well never have developed those."
There are a number of free dental clinics in operation around the country, where dentists volunteer to provide care to those without health insurance. But even if Willis had access to a free dental clinic, Stream said he still may not have been able to get the care he needed for his infection. "The wait is often months at these clinics, and this young man died within two weeks of his problem," Stream said.
Silverstein operates three free dental clinics in the San Diego area. "We're overwhelmed right now," he said. "We can't take any new patients."
Now you see what a bargain toothpaste, a brush, and some waxed string is compared to a $250k last-ditch effort to save your life. This same thing happened to a neighbor in Corpus Christi--a low-income illiterate (couldn't read ANY language) Mexican family too proud to sign their kids up for CHIP (the state's dental plan) almost lost their youngest because an abscess was on it's way to his brain. He was within three days of dying when the same last-ditch heroics were performed on him. This kid was never taught to brush his teeth, and the oldest kid was the only one in the family who owned a toothbrush. When I got involved, the family had a case of Colgate, a dozen toothbrushes, and a dozen packs of floss to their name. The oldest kid taught everyone else how to use them--at least HE learned in school. I also helped sign the kids up for CHIP.
Some of us haven't fallen far from the evolutionary tree.
What kills me is for $5, he could've had a brush, some toothpaste, and floss from the dollar store. For $10, this kid could've had his bad tooth pulled in Mexico. For $25, he could've had the tooth drilled and filled in Mexico, preventing this whole harrowing and costly ordeal. If I'd known them back then, I'd have paid for the trip to Mexico. I didn't even know of their dental plight until the sick kid got hauled away in an ambulance.
It looks like we won't have Obamacare to blame for killing people so much as we can blame the distinct lack of dental services to the poor--here we go back to caveman days! Wait until Obamacare kicks in--then we'll have (once again) death risks all around us. This time, the teeth, tusks, and sharp hooves will come from Congress, and not from ancient animals...oh wait...Congress IS an ancient animal, isn't it? :)
Let's not worry so much about WHAT people eat, but what they do AFTER they eat! Why isn't a toothbrush and floss on the new nutritional plate icon, or at least parked next to it like a fork and knife?
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