That is, the pain when they reach into your wallet. Nicole, believe me, I feel your pain.
Just last week I had to spend several hundred dollars of last month’s donations to fix a dental problem. Not a physically painful one, like an abscess, but the splitting off of several critical teeth (which would have cost me several thousand later on if I didn’t take care of it now). Those teeth were breaking off like the damned polar ice shelf.
My dentist gives me a pretty good discount because he knows my situation, and he always tries to come up with the cheapest possible yet reasonably healthy solution. It’s not him. It’s just that dental care is too expensive for most people.
This is one reason I will always feel warmly toward Hillary Clinton. During Bill’s administration, when she was running the health care meetings, she was the only person who said it was absurd not to cover dental care, that your teeth were connected to your body and had a huge impact on your health. The insurance industry was furious; apparently dental insurance is quite lucrative, and they didn’t want to lose any of that pie.
Anyway, she tried. Which is more than most people did.
And the bit where they yell at you for not coming in for your six-month check-up, while they have pictures of their skiing vacation in wherever and tell you about how well their kid is doing in college that your fucking teeth are paying for.
I’ve long wondered why dentists work under a different payment plan from insurance companies than do medical doctors, or, for that matter, anesthesiologists who seem to be paid almost 100% of what they bill!