Pax Nortona – A Blog by Joel Sax
From the Land of the Lost Blunderbuss
Dental Insurance Fraud
Posted on February 19, 2004 in Dentition Insurance Rage & Annoyance
While undergoing the reconstruction of my teeth a few years back, I heard from a few people of a dentist who, during their northern California childhood, had ensured a steady income for himself by drilling tiny holes in their teeth. My prosthodontist showed me the casts of one such victim: his cutters had been worn, chipped, and broken into a micro-range resembling Wyoming’s Grand Tetons. Nothing fit to anything else: the bite from hell tormented this man until he raised the $40,000 to get his mouth reworked. Insurance would not cover it.
He was but one of many victims of the dentist’s lifetime financial plan. I had a friend who also enjoyed the bastard’s attentions. The quack who mistreated her kept many prosthodontists busy for many years.
While hunting for stories of dental fraud, I found this strange little story which dates from the year 2001:
Out of the blue one morning, [Joyce Bryant] allegedly went to Briggs’ home and asked if she could take the kids to a dentist. No small a surprise when Briggs refused to hand her kids to a woman she’d never met, for treatment by a dentist she didn’t know.
But Bryant smelled a big payday. She allegedly lurked nearby until Briggs went to work, leaving the kids at home. Then Bryant barged into the house and told the six kids (aged 2-11), “Let’s go. I’m taking you to the dentist.”
She bundled them into her van and carted them to Dental Centers of America. Along the way, Bryant spotted Briggs’ 15-year-old daughter at the bus stop and bribed her $5 to forge her mother’s signature on parental consent forms, the feds contend.
A Toronto-based friend of mine on IRC told me that he had a mad orthodontist who broke and removed his entire upper jaw. “Didn’t the Canadian government do anything?” I asked. “This wasn’t a Canadian dentist,” he said. “It was an American.”
Can anyone explain to me why dental insurance and medical insurance are kept separate? It’s almost as if we think that teeth are not a part of the body, that fixing them is a luxury item like a nose job or a facelift.
Having felt the pain and discomfort of having a craggy bite and the happy feeling of having a reconstruction done, I can testify that they play a vital part. Experience has shown me that if you want to have the work done, you need to cough it up out of your own pocket. (My plan doesn’t cover dental implants, for example, even though they do a better job of fixing a broken bite than bridges. I’m not doing it for the look but for the comfort and the relief of pain!)
