A man who was only twenty-four years old died in Cincinnati, Ohio, due to a tooth infection. This is not something one would typically expect a young man, who lived in one of the richest countries in the world, to die from. Ultimately, this happened because he didn’t have insurance, and could not afford to get the health care and medication he needed.
Kyle Willis was a twenty-four year old father who lived in Cincinnati, Ohio. Two weeks before his death, his wisdom tooth started hurting him. He did go and see a dentist, who told him that the tooth was infected, and that it needed to be pulled.
Mr. Willis didn’t have health insurance, (or dental insurance) and was unemployed. He decided not to have his wisdom tooth pulled, despite the pain he was in and the advice of the dentist, specifically because he could not afford to pay for it.
Later, he ended up in the emergency room because his face started swelling, and his head ached. He was given a prescription for antibiotics, and a prescription for pain medication. Unfortunately, he could not afford to pay for both, so he chose the pain medication. It seems to me that the man must have been in a tremendous amount of pain at that point.
Unfortunately, the lack of antibiotics allowed his tooth infection to spread. The infection spread to his brain, which caused it to swell. Kyle Willis died as a result of the swelling in his brain.
All of this could have easily been prevented if this young father was able to afford health insurance (for the prescription drugs), and dental insurance (for the wisdom tooth removal). He died in 2011 in the United States from a health condition that shouldn’t result in death today. In 1927, deaths from untreated toothaches were much more common than they are now.
The U.S. Surgeon General issued a report on 2003 that found that around 108 million Americans lacked dental insurance. This was 2.5 times the number of Americans in 2003 that lacked health insurance.
In April of 2011, the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that 33% of the Americans who took their survey said that they skipped dental care or dental checkups because they could not afford to pay for them. In August of 2011, the Commonwealth Fund found that 72% of the Americans who lost their health insurance as a result of losing their employment said that they had skipped needed health care, or had decided not to fill their prescriptions. Again, the reason was because they could not afford to pay for the health care they needed.
The president-elect of the American Academy of Family Physicians, Dr. Glenn Stream, notes that young men are the group most likely to lack health insurance. The news story about Kyle Willis illustrates how dangerous it can be to have to forego necessary health care because of an inability to pay for it. It also shows that there is no “safety net” helping the people who end up in these situations.
Image by Rex Roof on Flickr