Watching the new Frontline documentary made me grateful for Web journalism and its infinite elasticity. PBS’ “Dollars and Dentists” — about the extreme difficulties millions of Americans, including children with government-provided insurance, experience getting dental treatment — tells an important story about a key part of the U.S. health care system that is usually ignored.
But squeezing a complicated story into a 50-minute film leads to scapegoating and avoids the most fundamental questions about dentistry: Why does dental treatment cost so much, and why do we treat health problems of the mouth so differently from medical issues that afflict the rest of the body?
The film, which should be watched by everyone except those who are convinced they will never have a problem paying for their family’s dental care, makes the usual visit to a giant parking lot full of desperate people seeking free treatment. It devotes a segment to the kinds of for-profit children’s dental clinics that often appear in local TV news exposés during sweeps month, and another to the less frequently covered problems of adults who can’t afford (or don’t think they can afford, or who are simply too scared) to visit a private dentist for relief of pain and who end up in clinics that may pressure them to have teeth extracted and dentures fitted.
Read the full article here: PBS’ ‘Dollars and Dentists’: An Alarmist but Essential Look at American Dentistry