Posted on 09/04/2011 2:58:05 AM PDT by Cardhu
A 24-year-old Cincinnati father died from a tooth infection this week because he couldn't afford his medication, offering a sobering reminder of the importance of oral health and the number of people without access to dental or health care.
According to NBC affiliate WLWT, Kyle Willis' wisdom tooth started hurting two weeks ago. When dentists told him it needed to be pulled, he decided to forgo the procedure, because he was unemployed and had no health insurance.
When his face started swelling and his head began to ache, Willis went to the emergency room, where he received prescriptions for antibiotics and pain medications. Willis couldn't afford both, so he chose the pain medications.
The tooth infection spread, causing his brain to swell. He died Tuesday.
Calls to Willis' family were not immediately returned. University Hospital in Cincinnati, where Willis was admitted, did not comment, citing federal privacy laws.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
If only Obama added dental to Obamacare that man may be alive today.
Good thing Obamacare includes abortions. /sarc
The doctor probably prescribed the most expensive new synthetic antibiotic instead of penicillin or some other patent expired drug that would have worked just as well.
Naturally. Why get better if you can feel better for less?
There's the fatal error. Killing the infection would've reduced the pain. He could've spoken about his financial situation with his doctor or pharmacist so he could've gotten that advice.
My father had a bad tooth and he went to the dentist to get it pulled but they told him no drugs for the pain of pulling the tooth because he was being treated for brain cancer. They pulled the tooth without any pain killers.
That'd be the wrong choice. Put up with the pain for a while, treat the infection, and the pain will go away.
BTW, sometimes doctors will issue samples of antibiotics for free if they know you can't afford them.
If unemployed, there is seldom something, some chore or odd job that can't be done in exchange for professional services. It doesn't hurt to ask.
Been there, done that.
Bad decision. It's kind of like trying to give Amnesty to illegals with the doors still wide open.
Erythromycin, even.
Another article said the antibiotics would have cost him $27.
I think the real story should be that he died because he made the wrong decision and had the wrong priorities. He bought the painkiller, but didn’t buy the antibiotics.
Was he receiving unemployment? Where did he live? What food did he eat? Did he have cable TV?
The other story should have been that the dentist didn’t explain to him the risks of not pulling his teeth.
with pharmacies running markups of over 4000% and getting by, they have forgotten the non insured
why don’t you cancel you cable tv today and then tell me how fast that put money in your pocket
Does obamacare cover dental?
Yup, sort of like the landlords marked up rates because of getting government money for their apartments. They forget the working man tenants.
The working man is actually closer to living in the shelter than the lazy man in today's America.
If he is unemployed, he should have canceled his cable TV a long time ago. The point is that if your income shrinks, you have to give up some things.
He could have used a credit card in the pharmacy and pay it off later.
How insensitive of you < sarc
Had TWO infected (abscessed) teeth last fall. Pain was driving me literally delirious. Don’t have insurance so went to the emergency room, hoping to maybe get an anti-biotic before I could see the dentist. I was prescribed ALEVE! I couldn’t believe it! I barely scraped up enough to get into a dentist to pull the teeth, and am still paying on the emergency bill, even though I was only prescribed ALEVE when I could have been dead from infection within a week.
I thought about preparing for next time with the “fish anti-biotics” or some such sold on Ebay.
Untrue. There are many clinics and univerisities that will provide care at no charge. It's likely you're going to be seen by an inexperienced dental student under supervision of an instructor, but you'll get the procedure done.
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