Naran of Kennebunk, ME
Maybe if Gov. Baldacci actually paid the state's MaineCare dental providers (and doctors) what they're owed, they wouldn't be as reluctant to take new MaineCare patients.

It's kind of hard for dentists and doctors to stay in business when the state doesn't pay its bills. I can't blame them a bit for not taking MaineCare patients. They have to eat too, and pay their staff. They can't do it on empty state promises.

Of course, a new computer system that works instead of costing us all $56 million for nothing would have been helpful.

So would a plan to pay Maine's medical providers, and stopping the millions of dollars in waste on unworkable programs like Dirigo.

The fact is, Maine is bankrupt, and Baldacci is borrowing to keep the lights on. Meanwhile, there are ever more new state social programs coming along, and ever more spending on administration and bureacracy.

Do we need free pay phones and #211 social service numbers and staffing, or do we need dental care for Maine kids?

There is no denying Maine's children should have access to good dental and medical care, but to do that, we need someone in the Blaine House who understands that you pay the essentials first, and THEN you spend money on things like self-esteem programs and billions in too-expensive new schools.

The voters had a chance to make a good change in November, but the state trough-dwellers wouldn't have it.

Now, we all get to pay the price for another four years, and that includes Maine's children and their unmet dental needs.
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nyscof of Old Bethpage, NY Stop with the fluoride, already. No American is fluoride-deficient. They are DENTIST deficient. A Long Island, NY, boy just had four molars pulled because they were destroyed by ingesting too much fluoride, News 12 (cablevision) reported.

The sad thing is that most poor people in America have insurance - Medicaid. But American dentists refuse to treat people with Medicaid or other low reimbursing government subsidized insurance.

It's a mystery to me that dental schools and dental education can be government subsidized and the government doesn't require dentists to treat a certain number of low-income people a year.

Most dentists also won't work and/or live in rural or low-income inner cities and leave many people without dental care.

The problem is that organized dentistry lobbies against any dental or healthcare group that tries to fill the void lest it infringe on their lucrative monopoly.

Most dentists make more money than most physicians while working fewer days and fewer hours doing mostly cosmetic treatment and offering spa therapy.

When Dental Health Aide Therapists started drilling, filling and pulling teeth in rural Alaska which has been unable for decades to attract dentists, the American Dental Association and the Alaska Dental Society sued them

Instead of actually treating America's low-income, dentists organize to throw more fluoride chemicals into our bodies via water fluoridation because "they care so much." Or they apply fluoride varnish with an extremely toxic 22,600 ppm fluoride.

Fluoride is more toxic than lead. While we are trying to get the lead out, more and more fluoride is being introduced into our bodies.

Deamonte Driver's water supply was fluoridated and I doubt he was drinking fluoride-free bottled water as dentists claim when tooth decay rates climb.

The hundreds of millions of dollars spent on fluoridation throughout the United States could be better spent actually treating inevitable cavities. http://tinyurl.com/6kqtureport abuse