God bless us, every one...with ALL we need

Well, it's now just under 24 hours until the skies will be filled with the sounds of reindeer flying and gentle bells jingling ~ it's Christmas once more, and I have thought quite a bit about what this means to me this year. It's going to be less painful this year than it was last year ~ the first few after Mom passed were pretty tough, and once I even wished that Christmas would just come and go and I wouldn't have to deal with it. But Christmas isn't about gifts underneath a tree, nor is it about Santa Baby hurrying down a chimney, Rudolph guiding a sleigh in the fog, or whether or not the ground is white with snow. It's about the miracle of life, and birth and even more, about rebirth of the human spirit. It took me three long years plus to remember that, but I did remember and I'm grateful.

I've been thinking of what's been happening here in my state, that of the upcoming primary election. Like many others here in NH, I am up to the eyeballs with the shenanigans these folks are pulling. One can't open his or her mouth without trying to destroy another, and one candidate even wants to pretty much elminate about half of the Cabinet! Of course, the departments he wants to eliminate are the departments that we need the most, at least in my opinion, but who am I???? Once they have to focus on another state they will be gone for a while and we'll have a chance to breathe and relax. Until June, that is. But hey, a few months is better than none.

The biggest thing on my mind right now, though, is health care. Many people are without decent health care and even more are without dental care. I'm lucky because I have the former, but I've been without dental care since I lost my job in June. Now, theoretically, if I didn't have health care, I would still be able to receive care at the local hospital if I were sick, and if I had no money to pay for my care, I would receive that care at no cost. I suspect that situations like that are less common than facilities would like us to believe, but I certainly don't think it's a rarity, either. If a patient has only a couple of hundred dollars and can pay that money toward their care, I have no doubt that any health care facility or practive would move heaven and earth to get that money ~ more to minimize losses than to be mean and spiteful about people who are down on their luck and have no "discretionary" money to spend on health care.

My big bugaboo these days is lack of dental care. The AMA has the Hyppocratic Oath that every physician takes, but I am not aware of any such commitment on the part of those physicians who specialize in dental care. When I lost my dental care in June, I was no longer able to take care of my teeth. As a diabetic, I need to pay special attention to my dental health, and before I was diagnosed about 6 years ago, I was doing just that. I was raised to think of the dentist as the next best thing (or worst, depending on your point of view) as Satan personified, and a real, live, boogeyman. I was taught to be fearful of the dentist, and I never visited one until I was in my 20's. I didn't have the worst experience with him, but he would get really angry about my bona fide phobia and told me I needed to just get over it. I eventually moved on to another dentist, who was much more empathic (and yes, that's the proper word - "empathetic" is incorrect) and who took the time to get me familiar with his office and the staff he had. It literally took me 4 years to set foot inside the examining room, and I lasted only five minutes or so before I started to - again, literally - break out in a cold sweat and to shake uncontrollably. This man was wonderful however, and offered me some conscious sedation so that he could look inside my mouth to examine my teeth. It took a long time before I could go in and have work done but I knew I had to do it to be healthy and to set an example to my own child. I was damned if I would let her pick up on my phobia and I worked hard to get through it.

However, times being what they are, I lost my dental coverage when my husband began collecting his retirement from the state several years ago. I wasn't eligible for dental benefits where I was working at the time, so I didn't go to the dentist until I was able to get insurance. If he or our child needed care, they got it, and we did what we could to pay what we could whenever we could. Again, things being what they are now, the bottom line is that dental care has become a luxury. If I do not have the money to pay to have my teeth cleaned ~ and that's about $200 - $300 ~ then I don't go, because the dentist doesn't let anyone carry a balance for any reason. If I don't have the money, it's too bad. As arrogant as that sounds in writing, I don't intend it to. It's just that if one cannot pay for one's care, then the care needs to be delayed until one can pay for that care. And that goes for co-pays as well. Before the dentist does any work at all, patients are given an estimate of how much that co-pay will be and if the patient doesn't have the money on the day of the appointment, the work isn't done. Period.

That burns me up. We talk about human rights and the right to a decent standard of living and health care, but it apparently doesn't apply to teeth. My dentist is a great guy and I don't want to go to anyone else, but it fries my butt that I can't have dental care unless I am wealthy. It's not my fault I don't have dental insurance. And yes, it's not his fault, either. I feel strongly that people who perform services deserve to be paid and paid their worth. If I had hundreds of thousands of dollars to donate, I would give much of it to him for those people who don't have insurance and who need dental care for themselves and their families. I don't have a sense of entitlement insofar as I think I deserve free care. But if all I can pay for a cleaning is $50, then I should be able to get my teeth cleaned for $50. If I need a filling or something else, I should be able to pay what I can when I can and not feel guilty about it.

The other thing that really gets me upset is that once a person is receiving Medicare benefits, all health care professionals ~ whether MD's, eye doctors, or dentists ~ should be required to accept Medicare as payment for the care a person needs. I have never understood why retirees are actually penalized for having the same needs as I do and why they are expected to fork over as much as I do (when I can pay, that is). These people are on a fixed income, and they have to pay more? No wonder the elderly end up relying more and more on Medicaid for their support!


We live in such a selfish and greedy society today. So many are out for only themselves and they don't show compassion for anyone unless it makes the 6:00 PM news. I think we need to take a good, long look at ourselves and our motivations and look at what we do to one another. And if that look isn't the kind we want to see, then we know what to do. I call on all the doctors, dentists, and any other professional enpowered with ensuring a decent qiality of life, and I challenge you all to start looking at how you live your lives and what you do to give back. We are all in this life together, you know.

My only regret is that that SOB named Donald Trump won't read this.