just how powerful is the Dental Lobby?

[ensho]

will they keep dental out of health care?

[jody]

1. Who is the "Dental Lobby" that you believe want to "keep dental out of health care?" n/t

[ensho]

2. that's what I'm asking - everything has a lobby so

how powerful is it.

I get the feeling dentist don't want to be part of universal healthcare.

[zipplewrath]

4. They are well organized

They identify the dentist of every member of congress and arrange to use them to lobby their congressman. Flip side is that I suspect they aren't all that interested in universal healthcare either way. It is relatively inexpensive to buy insurance for dental, and many of them make a nice amount of "side money" negotiating extended payment plans (i.e. charging interest). They probably wouldn't particularly complain, but I suspect it isn't all that important either.

[jody]

5. Do you mean the American Dental Association? They are the largest group representing dentists so

what is their position?

[scheming daemons]

3. My dentist's lobby has magazines that are too old.... so....

...not that powerful.


;-)

[SidDithers]

6. You don't wanna mess with the dental lobby...

Sid

[Manifestor_of_Light]

7. The dental lobby restricts freedom of speech.

They will not let dentists tell their patients that mercury is deadly in any form.

They lie and state that mercury fillings are just fine, although dentists have noted from approximately 1860 the harmful effects of mercury fillings. They started using them in 1840. That's how low tech and even harmful they are.

The FDA has, for decades, ridiculously insisted that mercury fillings pose no health threat whatsoever to children. While dismissing hundreds of studies showing a clear link between mercury amalgam fillings ("silver fillings") and disastrous neurological effects in the human body, the FDA denied the truth about mercury and effectively protected the mercury filling racket that has brought so much harm to so many people. For over a hundred years, a cabal of "mercury mongers" made up of the American Dental Association, mercury filling manufacturers and indignant dentists have reaped windfall profits by implanting toxic fillings into the mouths of children, all while insisting that mercury -- one of the most toxic heavy metals known to modern science -- posed no health threat whatsoever.

Today, that reign of toxicity is about to end. Thanks to the tireless, multi-year efforts of people like Charles Brown, National Counsel for Consumers for Dental Choice (www.ToxicTeeth.org), the FDA has now been forced to acknowledge a fact so fundamental that, by any measure of honest science, it should have adopted the position decades ago. What position is that? Simply that mercury is toxic to humans.

[nichomachus]

9. Especially when they put all that stuff in your mouth and then ask you questions n/t

[yodoobo]

8. Clearly, you are an anti-dentite.

[Posteritatis]

10. To give an actual serious reply..

One thing I heard is that dental is so rarely covered in universal programs because just about everyone will use it regularly, so in the end it might come around to the same general expense if it comes out of pocket or comes out of taxes. Compared to, say, ER coverage, which a lot of people might go through their whole life only using once or twice if at all, or a lot of standard GP coverages which would involve a couple of doctor's visits and maybe a prescription or two every year or so... etc.

I have no idea if that's the case or not, but it's the first argument I'd heard that makes some kind of sense. Though I like the idea that they're in cahoots with the magazine industry in some nefarious Xanatos-esque plot.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

11. It's part of evil insurance company non-coverage.

They usually don't cover glasses or teeth.

I've worn glasses since I was seven years old and could NOT function without them.

I got contacts in high school, in the mistaken belief that I would have dates if I wore them - :rofl:

This lady seems to be about as nearsighted as I am: