Above: A dental clinic in Plainfield, New Jersey, supported by the New Deal's Civil Works Administration (CWA), ca. 1933-1934. Photo from Henry Alsberg (ed.), America Fight the Depression: A Photographic Record of the Civil Works Administration, New York: Coward-McCann, 1934, p. 127, used here for educational, non-commercial purposes.
Above: A dental hygienist cleans a patient's teeth, while an enrollee in the New Deal's National Youth Administration (NYA) assists, on a WPA project in Kanawha County, West Virginia, ca. 1935-1943. Photo courtesy of the National Archives.
During the New Deal, there were great efforts to bring more dental care to more people, especially children from low-income families. For example, "The WPA took an active part in providing public health services in rural areas where these services had been entirely lacking... in some rural areas the WPA operated mobile dental clinics, staffed with a dentist, nurse, and clerk, that went in trailers from school to school" (Final Report on the WPA Program, 1935-43, 1946, p. 69).
FDR and his fellow policymakers tried to set us on the right path. Today, we've purposefully stepped off that path, and opted for trickle-down economics instead - a mean-spirited, saliva-dripping form of economics, where you only deserve the health your wealth can purchase.
The result? Well, in terms of dental care...
"Wealthy Americans spend billions of dollars per year, collectively, to improve their smiles. Meanwhile, about a third of all people living in the United States struggle to pay for even basic dental care. The most common chronic illness in school-age children is tooth decay. Nearly a quarter of low-income children have decaying teeth, well above the national average; black and Hispanic children also experience higher rates of untreated decay... Dental coverage improved modestly during the Obama administration, through an expansion of Medicaid and the state Children's Health Insurance Program under the Affordable Care Act, but access remains patchy and wholly inadequate... At the pediatric dental clinic at the University of Illinois at Chicago, there's a two-year waiting list for children who need dental surgery that requires anesthesia" ("America’s Dental Gap Has Left People Relying on Pliers, Chisels, and Whiskey," The Nation, November 3, 2017, emphasis added).
That's right folks. As the super-wealthy utilize their record wealth--obtained from decades of tax cuts, job outsourcing, fraud, paying workers as little as possible, and barbaric investments in private prisons, tobacco, and war--to brighten their pearly whites and have custom-made porcelain veneers installed in their mouths, many low-income children have to wait years for needed surgery.
So... what was Trump saying about "$hithole countries" again?
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