Australian dentists gouge health funds. We need Medicare for teeth | Peter Goers
Sadly, the poor are more likely to have bad teeth than the rich. One tooth implant costs thousands, writes Peter Goers.
Kevin Rudd always looks like a dentist to me. That’s no bad thing. Dentists are essential although they are like the police – we resent them until we need them.
It’s often said that you know you’re getting older when police and footballers suddenly look young. I’m convinced my dentist is 17. He looks 17.
Fluoride in the water has helped our teeth even though it was the original “communist plot”.
Wackos have bigger conspiracies to worry about these days – contrails and chemtrails and that the Clintons and the late Queen were shapeshifting lizard pedophiles working from a pizza joint in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
Now you can even buy toothpaste with fluoride.
Dentistry is expensive but a necessary investment. Recently we learn of dentistry by postcode. You can pay $420 for a standard consultation in a leafy eastern suburb and $150 at Elizabeth. The average cost per standard consultation is $248. The excellent Australian Dental Association defends this by saying that rents are more expensive in expensive places, costs are soaring and each dental surgery is a mini hospital.
Sadly, the poor are more likely to have bad teeth than the rich. One tooth implant costs up to $7000.
We need Denticare – Medicare for teeth. We need more public dentistry, too.
The only health insurance I have is extras cover which costs $71.81 a month. This subsidises my dentistry and I also get about 12 subsidised massages – I have to pay people to touch me.
Dentists gouge health funds.
I was having my teeth cleaned by an hygienist and, unasked, the dentist came in to give me a check-up.
He was in the room for less than a minute and looked in my mouth for 10 seconds. My health insurer was charged $39 for that. So dentists can earn $39 a minute. Now those check-ups are mandatory during a clean.
Why do dentists love trying to have a conversation with their patients when your mouth is full of their fingers and stuff and you can’t talk?
Times change. Barbers used to be dentists as well.
As a teenager I had four wisdom teeth removed in the chair by a dentist who gave me an Aspro and sent me home on the bus. Nowadays, people go to hospital for a week for that procedure.
It’s bizarre but true: Parents of young people getting married used to pay for all their teeth to be removed and replaced by dentures to save the expense of dentistry throughout their married life.
I needed yet another root canal filling and instead opted to have the tooth removed. I’ve kept the tooth in a jar and I’ll be buried with it much as eunuchs kept their dinkle donkles in a jar and could be buried with them – whole.
The loss of teeth is not to be taken lightly. In the musical A Little Night Music the old courtesan says: “To lose a husband or a lover or two is vexing but to lose one’s teeth is a catastrophe.”
Parliament tours cancelled – but for who?
Apparently an increased number of tour groups visiting SA Parliament is causing tension among pollies. Bags and pens have been banned.
This year parliament will have only sat for about 50 days. A tour group would be lucky to actually see politicians in the chambers and then – is it worth it?
HOT/NOT
HOT
Tim Curry’s brilliant memoir, Vagabond
SA Power Networks – very considerate to deal with
NOT
Aida postponed, and I’ve been practising my arias.
The Liberal Party taking algal bloom policy from David Speirs.
Banning Vegemite in jails.
The Jetty Rd, Glenelg, fiasco – the councillors who voted for it must take responsibility.
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Originally published as Australian dentists gouge health funds. We need Medicare for teeth | Peter Goers
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