Dentistry and the poor

The Toronto Star had an excellent lead article this morning about a man who is having trouble finding work because most of his teeth are missing. The problem is that Ontario has no government-subsidized dental plan; the government will only pay for dental emergencies. This means that the poor are often in considerable pain because of tooth problems.

I am lucky enough not to be poor, but Ontario's lack of denticare has been a concern for me for quite some time. First, the back story: When I was 12, I was hit by a softball and lost a front tooth. The dental technology of the time was less sophisticated, and the only solution available back then was to shave down the teeth on either side and cement in a plastic bridge containing the missing tooth. This worked fine for many years; basically, I forgot that I had a false tooth.

In 1998, one of the teeth supporting the bridge broke off. I had to get root canal work done on the broken tooth, have another tooth shaved down, and get a new bridge put in. This cost over $4000, only half of which was covered by my employer's dental plan. (The only upside was that I don't have much fear of dentists any more. I was 2 1/2 hours in the chair getting the new bridge done. After that, ordinary checkups and fillings hold no terror for me. Bring it on.)

Currently, I am working as a contractor, and have no dental plan. If anything were to happen to my bridgework, any repairs would put a significant and possibly catastrophic dent in my savings. So, as much as possible, I avoid actually using my fake teeth to chew things. And I'm fanatical about flossing them. But, because it costs me real money, I don't go to the dentist as often as I should.


When it comes time to buy a new computer, I'm seriously starting to think about converting to a Mac. I've been reluctant to switch systems, as I have a lot of PC-based software, but apparently the latest Mac operating system can run Windows as an option (since Macs are now Intel-based). And I have concerns about Windows Vista (some of which are summarized in this Wikipedia article).

As Scot Finnie mentions in his article on Vista in Computerworld, Microsoft Vista hasn't been designed to make ordinary consumers like you or me happy. It has been designed to please large customers, to avoid negative publicity, and to placate Hollywood studios and other major content providers. Features such as digital rights management actually make life more difficult for ordinary computer users.

For more opinions, both pro-Vista and anti-Vista, you can check out this summary from Computerworld. I probably won't read any of these links in much detail: I'll be too busy looking into getting a Mac.