This is just so wrong, and on so many levels too.
A twelve-year-old in Prince George County, Maryland outside D.C. died from a toothache. His mother had no insurance, had lost Medicaid, and couldn’t find a dentist in time. The tooth abscessed, it spread to his brain. After two operations and six weeks in the hospital, he died.
“Whatever we’ve got is broke,” [past year’s president of the Maryland State Dental Association Arthur] Fridley said. “It has nothing to do with access to care for these children.”
We need health care for all. That a boy dies a hideous, avoidable death because his mother can’t afford a dentist to pull a tooth is a grotesque example of the abysmal lack of health care in the US for the poor.