You know the pattern. A news story comes out that makes conservative ideology look bad. Then, like a swarm of angry bees, rightie bloggers go to work on the story, knock out the most damaging parts and fudge the rest, then post the revised version on their blogs with the conclusion “Democrats [or the poor, or liberals, or anybody else they don’t like] are stupid [or corrupt, or just evil].”
Example, the original story: A 24-year-old man in Cincinnati has an infected wisdom tooth. A dentist tells him the tooth needs to be pulled, but the man has no insurance and cannot afford it. The dentist gives him a prescription for an antibiotic and a painkiller. The young man decides he can’t afford both, and he just gets the painkiller. The infection spreads to his brain, and he dies from a treatable tooth infection. The moral is that if he had had health insurance he almost certainly would not have died.
Granted, deciding to fill the pain killer prescription but not the antibiotic, instead of the other way around, was not smart, but it’s not unusual these days for people to not realize that infections really can kill you. Young men in particular tend to think they are invincible.
As for the tooth, the article doesn’t say what the dentist planned to charge to extract the tooth, but a bit of googling revealed that the cost of extracting one impacted wisdom tooth (the tooth was almost certainly impacted if it was infected) runs between $350 -$650, depending on how badly the tooth is impacted, and that does not include the cost of anesthesia, x-rays, or post-operative care, which is sometimes needed.
The cost of antibiotics range widely from almost free to “holy bleep,” and the type of antibiotic prescribed depends on the type and severity of the infection. The cheap ones don’t always work on whatever infection you might have. So without more information we don’t know what the guy might have had to spend on the antibiotic, but it could have been anywhere from $20 (possibly less) to more than $100.
And probably any dentist will tell you that even if that infection had been brought under control the guy would still need the surgery to keep it from returning.
Example, wingnut version: According to Donald Douglas (to whom I do not link, after past experience with DD’s relentless and aggressive hostility to whomever disagrees with him), the infected wisdom tooth could have been pulled for a mere $80. He knows this because the original story also mentioned a 12-year-old Maryland boy who died for want of a tooth extraction that would have cost $80. But that would not have been a wisdom tooth, which cost a lot more to extract. Scared Monkeys repeats the misinformation about the tooth extraction cost.
Then, they all decide the guy could have gotten a $4 antibiotic from Wal-Mart. Again, maybe, maybe not. It depends on what antibiotic was prescribed, and we don’t know that. The doctor might have thought the common and cheap ones like amoxicillin wouldn’t have done the job. This is possible, since the antibiotic was prescribed by an emergency room doctor who saw the young man after his face had swollen and he was getting headaches.
[Update: Add James Joyner to the list of bloggers who assume the young man could have gotten a $4 supply of pills at Wal-Mart.]
Having decided that the young man died because he was too cheap to fork over $84, or ask his family for the money, the bloggers go on to attack his character for wanting government handouts. Well, enough of that.
Back to the example of the boy who might have been saved by a $80 tooth extraction — the original story said,
The Maryland boy underwent two operations and six weeks of hospital care, totaling $250,000. Doctors said a routine $80 tooth extraction could have saved his life. His family was uninsured and had recently lost its Medicaid benefits, keeping Deamonte from having dental surgery.
The family may well have faced a choice of either paying for the tooth extraction or for groceries, and they chose groceries. But the larger point is that the $250,000 no doubt was paid by taxpayers, or else the hospital padded other patients’ bills to cover the loss. It would have been more cost effective for all of us to have paid for the $80 extraction. If righties actually care about the cost of health care and federal budget deficits and such, they might want to ponder that.
After listening to Palin promise to create jobs by eliminating the corporate income tax in exchange for eliminating their loopholes and tax breaks, I am not surprised at this level of foolishness and distortion. The crowd in, I think, Iowa, yesterday cheered Palin’s illogic as if she had revealed the secrets of the Masons, the Fed and the Sphinx. I may be wrong, not being an accountant, but if corporations don’t have to pay taxes, there won’t be any need for loopholes and tax breaks that would save them money on something they won’t be paying anyway, and which they already dodge quite successfully.
If we just find quiet, out-of-the-way corners to shrivel up and die in, after mailing the Kochs our credit cards, savings and property titles (signed over, of course) things will be so much better.
Ignoring the facts: IOKIYAR. I am considering a new bumper sticker: FUIYAR, or maybe just something more tasteful, like DDIYAR. I haven’t even begun to explore the possibilities of IOKIYATB.
Generally “penny wise and pound foolish” covers a lot of ground and is too true. It would be cheaper in the long run to pay the dental bills with Medicaid/Medicare or other state help.
As to dental bills: That $80 may have been the cost at a clinic in MD, like at a dental school. (Here in NYC I’ve paid around $250 for a simple extraction.) The Cincinnati man may have had to go to a private dentist, the tooth was impacted and in another class of surgery, and therefore way more expensive. There are so many details missing from the story. Both cases though are so sad.
I’m looking at some substantial dental work but I’m lucky I have a private dentist who I’ve seen for over 20 years and he’s willing to let me pay in installments.
Bill Bush: Ignoring the facts: IOKIYAR. I am considering a new bumper sticker: FUIYAR, or maybe just something more tasteful, like DDIYAR. I haven’t even begun to explore the possibilities of IOKIYATB.
These are probably quite witty but I’m not a mind-reader and I’ve never see FUIYAR, DDIYAR or IOKIYATB before. Can you spell them out for me? Thank you.
Purple Girl: I’m guessing “F*** you if you are a Republican”, and “Don’t Drive if …”. I’m not sure about the last one. “… if you are a total bastard?”
Here’s my entry: WWID? “What would _I_ do?” It’s much more relevent than WWJD, for after all, here I am.
IOKIYATB – It’s OK if you are to blame?
What you don’t mention, is how wingnuts think they’re being really clever when they defend their ideology by making sh$t up, and pissing off those in the reality based community. Rush does this all day long, and gets paid big bux for it, and these dittoheads just ape the Big Anal Cyst.
If defending their ideology required them to manufacture evidence that the Law of Gravity doesn’t work, or that the sun rises in the West, they would leap to the challenge.
This is my particular definition of a fool: someone who cannot see or accept reality when it’s staring at them in the face.
The real issue is not why are there fools, but how is it they are so visible and powerful, and what can be done to get them out of public space. Arguing with them is just a waste of time, and they don’t deserve argument.
“If righties actually care about the cost of health care and federal budget deficits and such, they might want to ponder that.”
They don’t. As I recall, Dick Cheney once said that Reagan proved deficits don’t mater. But I’ve kind of lost track of who’s not conservative enough for the 2011 righties, Cheney might have been kicked out of the club by now for all I know.
Two weeks ago, late Sat. night I noticed I could not bear weight on my heel. They crack in the summer and get painful, but this was increasing pain. I google infected heel and red line (yes, and doubled in length in 4 hours) and came up with cellulitis, a staph infection. OOOHH, flesh eating bacteria, so nice.
I have a friend who is the local doc. and who happened to be on call anyway that weekend. I would have gone to the clinic during the week, and if he had said I needed the emergency room, I would have gone also. Anyway, I described the symptoms and he told me what to do, hot pad, ibuprophen and antibiotics (“let’s nip this thing in the bud,” he said, and “glad you caught it early.”). I asked him if my foot was going to fall off by morning and he said “no.” I ask him if it felt better, should I bother getting the medicine and he said “yes.” (It is a half hour to WalMart, only pharmacy open on Sundays where I am).
I went to WM and got my $4 antibiotic (rad!) and then spent $70 more…And started taking the pills right away, because I was still scared of losing my foot (just a thing I have). It took over three days for the pain to subside. And that was an infection caught early! A week or more for the pain to go away completely.
So I am super lucky. Even tho broke, I am still in a class that a)is educated and sometimes hobnobs with doctors and b) would put it all on my credit card if necessary. But if I had to go to the ER for a silly, little foot infection, how expensive would that be? Why can’t we have clinics that work? Drop in, after hours, nurse practitioner, etc.? Even telephone. It would save so much money! No, I didn’t pay for my friend’s advice but almost anyone could scrounge up $20 or $80, depending on income, to go to a clinic immediately. The system is so screwed up.
And don’t even get me started on dental insurance. I just figure I will have to pay for any work, just like I pay for my car or rent. And I will figure out how to pay almost any amount to preserve, not pull them. But then again, I’m one of the lucky ones.
I’m glad folks are having fun with my proposed abbreviations. Clues for them as needs ’em: DD entails ceasing existence, and FU comes from FUBAR, a fine acronym for so many current things.
Jennifer, in NC and VA there are “Urgent Care” private clinics open every day of the year, early and late. I used one last month. My insurance paid, and I was seen by a very nice, effective NP to my complete satisfaction.
Even without insurance, it has to be better than an ER if you have any resources at all, and the wait was less than 10 minutes. It was directly across the street from the entrance to the hospital ER, which is where I had originally intended and dreaded going. It was much more suited to my blood pressure irregularity than an ER, and I was grateful not to have to buy a ticket to attend the Knife and Gun Club.
Would this make sense for much of the ER traffic? Probably. Health Care Reform could make big savings with simple clinics. I wonder if simple clinics could not be put adjacent to ER facilities, with some attempt at diversion upon triage, using a duplicate set of forms/computers to get everybody to an appropriate care level without extra cost?
Delurking to say that Jennifer, you were extremely lucky. Cellulitis can kill you. I am surprised your friend didn’t tell you to come in. When my cousin had it, her doctor sent her to the hospital immediately. She asked if she could go home for her toothbrush, etc., and the answer was no!
Anyone else out there, if you ever see a red line like that, go to the emergency room at once. And be aware that it can reoccur.
We need to get the insurance companies out of the health care business totally. I lived in Maryland when that boy died from the tooth infection. I don’t know about other people; but, not a lot of health insurance policies cover dental work. When I worked for the Federal Government, I usually had Kaiser Permanente because I was one of the lower graded groups of people who could not afford the Cadillac health care plans that most of Congress selects. Kaiser was good for my health needs but did not cover many other things such as dental. I did, however, belong to a Federal Government Union and it offered dental insurance at an additional cost. So, I had dental insurance. I chose a dentist that was six blocks from where I lived. What I remember about Wal-Mart out there is going with a friend to the closest Wal-Mart and spending about an hour and a half on the road to get there–costing a ton of gas when you think about the return trip. I did not have a car because I considered it a luxury on my salary. I used public transportation unless I went somewhere with friends; and, public transportation did not go to Wal-Mart. One time when I was very ill, it was close to the end of the pay period. I had $15 in my checking account and a bus pass. Thus, using my bus pass, I was able to get to Kaiser to see the doctor. And, prescriptions cost $7 so I had enough money for two prescriptions. If I needed more, I was going to have to choose. Do those right wingers even have a clue about what it is like to have to choose one medicine over another instead of getting all that you need? Probably not.
The crowd in, I think, Iowa, yesterday cheered Palin’s illogic as if she had revealed the secrets of the Masons, the Fed and the Sphinx.
Palin spoke in Indianola, Iowa, a small town near Des Moines. Just so we all know where this week’s Epicenter of Crazy is located. (Way too damn close to me for comfort.)
I would be interested to know how all the fact-impaired rightie bloggers pay for their medical care, since they have no freaking idea what things cost for the uninsured. They sound like a cartload of Marie Antoinettes, en route to the guillotine but thinking they’re going to the pastry shop.
I’m wondering if righties are born without wisdom teeth, since they so easily believe one could be extracted for only $80. I think it was more expensive than that when mine were pulled out sometime in the 1970s.
You forget the Republican health plan: Don’t get sick, and if you do, die quickly. Heavens forbid that we care about health care for mere untermenschen, after all. The untermenschen should just be glad we don’t round them up and exterminate them like the vermin they are.
– Badtux the Republican-channeling Penguin
It saddens me to think the right-wingers are attacking this guy for wanting a handout since, well, he obviously died instead of taking one.
More, it saddens me that there are people who respond to this story without compassion and a sense of disgust that such things happen in our “civilized” society.
Oh, no, it’s much more important that they defend their belief that they deserve what they have because they are smarter or work harder or are in some way better than that poor man, who foolishly wasn’t rich, and even more foolishly couldn’t make a clear and informed decision about his medical care while a) suffering from the unbearable pain of an impacted wisdom tooth infection or b) doped up enough to numb the pain of a).
And do any of them give a damn about the poor guy’s kid, who is now fatherless? Nope.
So many of the wingers imagine and desire some barbaric “state of nature” society, where only the smart survive, by guile and cleverness. They don’t even realize how much of their lives is made possible by the social contract they loathe. Like a fish, they can’t even perceive what it is like to be without the water they swim in, and they mock those thrown up on shore by the storm.
More and more, what bothers me about the right wing is that they are just SO mean-spirited and hateful. They just oppose anything that would make anyone ELSE’s life better.
The thing that struck me about so many of the conservative comments was their dismissal of the cost of an extraction as ‘only’ $80; one I read said the guy could have subscribed to a dental plan for ‘only’ $120, and another said hey, why not just borrow from the family?
These are comfortably off people living in a cocoon, for whom poverty is an urban myth. They literally refuse to believe there are Americans who cannot raise $80 in an emergency; or that some people have families who wouldn’t/couldn’t lend them 80 cents, let alone $80. Therefore in their wilful ignorance they conclude that stories of poverty-induced hardship are all just scams designed to justify the awful tax burden they have convinced themselves they have to bear.
After all as we all know, allegedly poor people all use food stamps to buy prime steaks, drive around in late model cars using their ipads, and go home to watch their flat screen TVs. They are therefore undeserving of either compassion or practical help. Any data that might undermine this cozy excuse for selfishness has to be vigorously discredited lest the whole moral foundation of conservative self-centredness be exposed for the fabrication it is.
Beautiful man, just beautiful.
And Bill Bush – I live in rural Colorado, need I say more? This is the place to come as a new doctor to get your student loans reduced, by working where no one else wants to. I am very lucky. I feel blessed. But it was a freaky day. I know two people whose lives were ruined by cellulitis.
Rural, only an hour from Aspen, but light years away.
“I think it was more expensive than that when mine were pulled out sometime in the 1970s”
I’ll bet it was.
When I was a kid, there was a nice old man on the block who once in a while give me a dime so I could buy “an ice cream”, but of course, the price for an ice cream cone was more like 50 cents.
I’m glad you decided to get to the doctor, Jennifer, that’s something I’m not good at doing (as most men).
Jeenifer,
Thank goodness you’re ok!
And Donald Dougas wouldn’t know anything about ‘wisdom’ teeth – because that MFer is about as un’wise’ as a brick, and much less useless.
That $80 extraction might have been a baby tooth with its roots partially or fully dissolved – something that *anyone* who remembers childhood would consider if they were interested in thinking about the facts of the situation.
Context is important here. Cheney was discussing a second round of tax cuts after winning the 2002 elections, and we’d just flipped from surplus to deficit, so tax cuts were a bad idea. Deficits only matter when Democrats are in power. Remember, deficits didn’t matter during the reign of St Ronnie who helped Saddam target his chemical weapons attacks. (Seriously. The US helped Saddam Hussein target chemical weapons attacks. And said that, while we have to condemn the use of chemical weapons, it’ll all be talk. We also sold them dual use chemicals (chemicals with a valid use, and a use for making chemical munitions). One wag suggested “if we want to know if Iraq has chemical weapons, we should check our invoices.”)
Deficits didn’t matter to George Bush The Sane And Conservative; raising taxes to close deficits meant execution was the only option.
But when Clinton took office? Whoo, *boy*, nothing was more important than deficit reduction. And if it wasn’t done by Republican plans, it clearly wasn’t “serious”.
Strangely, deficits stopped mattering when George the “Conservative” took over. And then, when Democrats took over – wow, were deficits the most important thing ever!
This is the scary thing about low information voting, as well. Republicans talk a good show about fiscal conservativism. If it seems like scary economic times are coming, and you don’t know anything else, you might think “aren’t Republicans fiscally conservative?” and vote Republican. Alas, Republicans are far from fiscally conservative, and have been for many years.