Man with no insurance pulls own teeth

[Judi Lynn]

Source: UPI

Man with no insurance pulls own teeth
Published: Feb. 4, 2009 at 4:43

BEVERLY, England, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- A British man says he used pliers to pull 13 teeth from his own mouth because he couldn't find a dentist willing to take government-insured patients.

Iraq War veteran Ian Boynton told the British tabloid The Daily Mail Wednesday that he asked more than two dozen dentists in East Yorkshire to look after his teeth, which he says were causing him severe pain. But since he couldn't provide private insurance, he was turned down, he said.

"I've tried to get in at 30 dentists over the last eight years but have never been able to find one to take on (National Health Insurance) patients," Boynton, 42, of Beverly, England, told the newspaper. Instead, he removed a tooth with a pair of pliers in 2006.

"In the end I knew it had to come out, and had to use the pliers to pull it. Amazingly, it did not hurt as much as you might think," said Boynton, a former British Army medic.



Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/02/04/Man_with_no_insurance_pulls_own_teeth/UPI-87911233783787/

[WriteDown]

1. Yikes....

and OUCH.

[slackmaster]

2. Great health care system

Too bad he couldn't find a dental school to do it for free.

[WriteDown]

4. I had a professor at UNC - Chapel Hill who was a brit...

He taught health econ and used to talk about the problem with the UK's health care system. We had some eye opening discussions. Crazy stuff.

[brentspeak]

22. Overall, though, the U.K's health care system beats the pants off the USA's pathetic "system"

If anything, the example discussed in the article just makes the argument that the U.K's national health care system should guarantee dental care as well as medical care. I'm sure you would agree.

[leftstreet]

3. AACK! I can't believe I clicked on this thread.

It's like driving past a car wreck.

I saw an ad on the teevee the other day for a product that basically 'fills in' holes in dental restorations. Kind of like doityourself temp fillings. I didn't know they made anything like that.

[Doremus]

21. I found that stuff the other day in the drug store when I went looking for dental wax

My 30yo cap finally disintegrated leaving a wire that would jab my tongue. I wanted some wax like they give to kids with braces. Didn't find any of that but found the DIY dental repair kit, lol.

It doesn't work, btw. The stuff disintegrated within a couple of hours. I used chewing gum for a few days until my tongue stopped hurting.

Crazy the stuff you have to do when you have cruddy insurance and few dollars. :(

[AndyA]

5. It's a wonderful world we live in, isn't it?

The dentists who turned him away should lose their license or whatever they have over there to practice.

Whatever happened to caring for patients? What ever happened to human compassion?

My heart aches when I hear about things like this. So sad. :(

[dipsydoodle]

14. Dentists in the UK

do National Health work by choice only - there is no obligation for them to do so. Some take specific numbers of such patients usually subject to those patients having at least annual check ups for which there is a small charge. Children and unemployed pay no charges. It may be that in his area all quotas were full. That wouldn't have stopped him going out of area. Private extractions cost about £120 - I had two difficult ones two pulled recently.

I've had private insurance in the past but my teeth were not covered anyway.

Presumably "human compassion" covers all of your medical bills in the USA. :sarcasm:

[AndyA]

16. Presumably "human compassion" covers all of your medical bills in the USA.

No, that's called Republican compassion.

[superconnected]

6. He wouldn't do much better here.

Sounds like he couldn't afford to buy his own insurance so he'd be pulling those teeth himself in the USA too.

[peacetalksforall]

7. I assumed from the subject line that it was the U.S. and my first thought was

our early frontier - no dentists around or no money

now there are dentists, but they are unaffordable to the uninsured

If we share with the Brits, we also share with the rest of the world.

Third world advancing.

[superconnected]

9. I've known so many people who couldn't afford dentists here who tried oral-jel until their teeth

feel out. The last person was a 21 yo who could barely afford to support herself. She tried to get into a dentist with some gov aid but they coudn't schedule her for 3 months and meanwhile she was going to the emergency room for the pain. The teeth ended up coming out from some sort of infection before the dentist appt. Ah the whole side of her head was swelled from it too and bruised. That was, lets see.. less than 6 months ago.

[NewsDrunk]

8. This is absolutely what we get

Oh my god, I guess we need a new Dem administration that will cut through the Rep. BS and get us some real health care.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

11. I think it will be hard for Obama to fix anything in England.

[havocmom]

10. I actually tried that with a couple of my own teeth

Owing to the arthritis in my hands, I could not put enough torque on the pliers. x(

[southpaw]

12. After watching Sicko, this comes as a bit of a surprise...

But then, Moore didn't say anything about the dental care in the U.K.

[dipsydoodle]

15. Most of our dental care

was taken out of the National Health Service donkeys years ago. Just cheap annual checkups these days and limits as to what dentists can charge for fillings etc and overall costs of a course of treatment. As I've mentioned elsewhere its all free for children and the unemployed including those unable to work due to incapacity.

Aside from that the article has been extracted from The Daily Mail aka The Daily Lie. I'm fucked if I know what interest this could possibly have in the USA.

[Cleita]

18. Somehow I felt that this belonged in my astroturf file. Thanks for

posting. I have known many Americans particularly in rural America who have had to do the same or fill cavities with wax because they can't afford dental care. It seems that bringing back dental coverage on your national health care would take care of your problem. I don't know what will take care of ours.

[dipsydoodle]

27. Our National health System is creaking at the seams

In actual fact there were always charges for dental work even under NHS treatment - the cost was only subsidised by the NHS. Cosmetic treatment of any description was always a no no.

As time moves on we're more likely to get less rather than more in terms of any type of medical treatment and certainly longer waiting times - those being the current issue. The system is funded by tax payments over and above normal income tax - in round terms 25% of wages above £5000 paid in combination between employer and employee, close on 50/50 , and that covers state pensions too. However - the gross funds finance the current situation at any given point in time. So - as our unemployment level rises there are less receipts. And - you can bet your life that our level of immigration will increasingly become an issue especially those freeloading on the system. You've got your social security numbers and we got our NH numbers which are used mainly to identify us for tax purposes etc. We have also got our NHS numbers issued at birth and I've noticed that increasingly those numbers whihc have lain dormant since the year dot are now being requested to ensure the right to NHS treatment - I had to dig mine out for some free physio last year.

[enlightenment]

19. It's an interesting tactic, I think -

a sort of side-swipe at single-payer NHS type health care. Seems to pop up right around the time that a critical mass of folks on DU start calling for it in the States . . .

The fact that in the US most employee insurance doesn't cover dental care - or if it does, it's only for yearly or bi-yearly cleanings and HUGE deductibles on everything else. The fact that dental insurance is prohibitively expensive, even for poor coverage. The fact that dentists in the US charge ridiculously high rates for even simple extractions and you'd better be prepared to sell a kidney for anything more complicated. The fact that most dentists will not allow patients to make payments and many won't even look at you until you've paid for at least the initial check-up. The fact that even dental schools charge - or have waiting lists that are months long. The fact that dental school costs more than med school, so new dentists are in hock up to their eyeballs by the time they go into business, so the whole vicious cycle repeats, ad infinitum . . .

All that is irrelevant, as long as you can point an accusatory finger at a 'socialist' system like the NHS.

[brentspeak]

23. Exactly

And some of the usual "submarine" posters (who most likely are "hard-working" trust-fund babies) are plying their "I got mine; sucks to be you! Ha! Ha!" propaganda skills on this forum.

[Barcelona]

24. It's pretty much the same here (Spain)

When you reach a certain age (11 or 12 IIRC) you are on your own. Just the most basic procedures are covered.

[dipsydoodle]

25. Maybe I should have expressed that differently

By children I meant those in full time education up to the age of 18.

[Politicalboi]

13. I had a tooth pulled last summer

And it costs me $138.00 without insurance. This guy is a soldier and they couldn't take care of his teeth. Sounds like he's here in the US instead of the UK.

[Cleita]

17. I'll wait for the Brits to weigh in on this. But it seems to me he

could have gone to a hospital and had one of the surgeons remove his teeth if the dentists didn't want to.

[Liberal Elitist]

20. Took me 2 mins to find lots of dentists in Beverly taking on NHS patients

I think this is a social care issue not a health one.

All these dentists were available to him: http://www.nhs.uk/ServiceDirectories/Pages/ServiceResults.aspx?Place=Beverley&Coords=4395,5030&ServiceType=Dentist&JScript=1

As he's unemployed he qualifies for free NHS dental treatment. Even if he had to pay, the cost of a checkup plus any fillings and or extractions needed at the time is £44.60: http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/1781.aspx?CategoryID=74&SubCategoryID=74

My guess is the poor chap has mental health issues. He's only 42 but he looks 60

But the Daily Mail doesn't care about him, just wants to run down the NHS

[Xithras]

26. He probably couldn't find one taking patients. Not an uncommon issue.

Had that problem myself a couple of years ago when I had to switch dentists. The insurance plan (Delta Dental) sent me a list of area dentists who took their insurance, and there were probably 40-50 offices listed. As I called them, all but four or five gave me an "I'm sorry, but we're not accepting new patients right now". The ones left over all had poor reviews online.

In my case, it turned out that a "friend of a friend" worked at the office of one of the highly rated dentists on the list, and she got my family and I on their patient list. If not for that inside connection, I'd have had to go to a guy with more complaints on his record than GWB.

[Cleita]

28. I had the same problem with Blue Cross. None of the dentists on the list

were taking new patients and I had to pay for it as well. So private insurance usually isn't much better. I also had the same problem with my health insurance also Blue Cross. No one would take it. I had to pay cash and try to get the money back from the insurance company. Now that I have Medicare I so far have had no problems with getting medical care.

[eilen]

32. My husband's insurance just dropped dental

which already had a big deductible. The foisted a Health care account on us so we have to use this card to pay for things but only after the deductible is met, an then we need to have over $2000 in the account because they use the account to pay for the general health insurance policy.

And by the way, he is in the IBEW. Even the unions have crappy insurance.

We have a cleaning coming up this month, I'm on the fence, I'm calling to find out the cost first since we have nothing towards our deductible for this year yet and things are very tight.

When my dh comes home, I'm going to have to send him for a big cleaning and he has an inherited gum condition that necessitates either two sessions or for him to be drugged.

[Cleita]

29. That seems to be an interesting tactic of the conservatives, to find someone with mental health

problems to print something derogatory about a NHC system. The article blames it on the system, but it seems when you look into the problem it is with the patient whose mental problems are being exploited by the doctors and periodicals involved. I have run into a couple of the same type of articles about the Canadian system. It turns out when I research it, the doctors and periodicals involved are trying to undermine the Canadian Medicare system.

[alfredo]

30. My dad used to pull his own teeth. It was no big thing to him. He would

loosen it with his fingers and then pull it with his hands. He didn't use pliers. He was an upholsterer so he had very strong hands.

[ipaint]

31. My husband pulled his own tooth

We were broke (unemployed and living in a pop up camper). You do what you have to do. We had and still have no access to health care or dental care. Luckily we are employed at the moment so we could just barely afford an extraction if one of us needed one. I have a front tooth that is broken that I repair with temporary filling mix every 7 days or so. I can't afford to have it replaced, it costs a small fortune. I hope when it needs to be pulled I can afford it or I'll be doing it myself too.

I suspect we are far from alone in having to take care of our own dental problems as best we can.

[lonestarnot]

33. My grandpa pulled a couple of his long long time ago.

[wroberts189]

34. rinse with salted water every day for a month. ...this is so sad. nt