this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2025
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United States | News & Politics
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Do you really need it?
Out of a population of about three-quarters of a billion, under 14 million people (approximately 2%) in Europe receive artificially-fluoridated water. Those people are in the UK (5,797,000), Republic of Ireland (4,780,000), Spain (4,250,000), and Serbia (300,000).
Most European countries don't use it and we are fine.
I think it would be less important in a place with universal health care and dental care as kids would probably be brushing their teeth and get taken care of properly, but it's more dire in North America than you would think. Canada doesn't have free dental and America doesn't have free health or dental whereas lots of European countries have universal healthcare.
Almost none of which include dental care.
They're called luxury bones for a reason..
Wait hold on really? I saw NHS covers dental and eye exams. Do the countries with universal healthcare that do not cover dental, also not cover eye exams?
Maybe in the distant past, but definitely not anymore. The rules in other countries in the UK differ, but from a quick look in England eye tests are free only for under 16 (or 18 and in education) or over 60, people on income related benefits, and or have certain conditions or predisposition to them.
Dental is charged in tiers, from £26.80 for simple work to £319.10 for more complex work, however these reset every 2 months, so if you have to go back to complete complex work after longer (which is likely due to lack of availability) you gave to pay again. Kids, pregnant and postnatal people, and or those on income related benefits get treated for free. However there are hardly any NHS dentists left, they've almost all gone private, where they charge much more, and while private clinics are required to provide NHS services, the wait times and availability as I already mentioned, are terrible.
TIL. Sounds pretty close to the American Medicaid system (which is health, dental, and vision) tbh. It's free if you're low income, pregnant, and it's not as hard to get for children, but the number of times I heard "we don't have any openings for Medicaid patients" was... Too high.
The sad truth is that the NHS has slowly and steadily been defunded in to uselessness, to justify and enable large chunks of it to be sold off to (mostly) American insurers under the guise of "increasing efficiency" or whatever, in the very deliberate process of tuning our system in to one more like yours.
This means private insurance has become a flourishing business here, but all that does is syphon trained professionals, facilities, and resources from the NHS, and hands them over to those who can pay to skip the queue, and the profits to a bunch of already rich bastards, resulting in staff and bed shortages which lead to months and even years long waiting lists for not only simply seeing a doctor, but also getting treatment, even for time sensitive conditions like cancer.
The same thing is happening in Canada and other places where there is socialised healthcare, because making money is more important to our capitalist, and at best neoliberal, governments and those who fund them, than our lives are.
I'm from the Netherlands, we have healthcare but dental is usually not included and most people pay it themselves. You can include it but it's usually more expensive than a normal yealy check-up.
Why do Americans and Canadians have bad teeth? Is brushing something people just don't do?
https://iwcn.nl/living/healthcare/dental-care/
So you are wrong, you (most likely depending on your age I guess) had free dental as a child, the fluoride is aimed at children who are not guarenteed that in the US, it varies state to state and depending on your income.
That I didn't know, the healthcare system was very different when I was a kid myself. We have made it a lot more commercial on the last 20 years.
And if you look at Canada the province with the worst dental health is Quebec and it's the only province where fluoridation is pretty much non existent.
But why is dental health so bad? Is going to the dentist very expensive? I don't have dental insurance and I pay about a 100 euros to get my teeth checked and cleaned yearly. But for most people it's about 50 for a normal check-up.
I pay about $200 CAD per visit for cleanings and x-rays, so about $400 per year. That is an acceptable amount for me, personally, but that can be a lot for some people, especially low income households that have more than one child.
No more expensive than anywhere else in Canada especially now that they've launched an instance program for anyone under 18 and over 65 for the whole country.
If you’re not getting X-rays, how are they finding cavities or other issues?