The economy , the lifeblood of our nation , is sluggish right now.
Federal officials recently reported 114,000 jobs were lost across the country, marking the weakest three-month period for employment in the nation since the early 1990s recession.
California looks a little worn out as well. Dot-com companies, which were supposed to sustain the Golden State’s economy and were indeed the source of much of our prosperity, are rapidly fading.
Most recently, the Foster City-based online grocer Webvan, Inc. collapsed, abandoning 2,000 workers. Despite the claims of some who say California’s economy is on the mend, the Federal Reserve Bank’s most recent analysis suggests the state’s financial system could easily flatline.
As California’s job creators seek to combat the recession, their employee benefits are often an immediate casualty, specifically health insurance. Premiums dictate how much coverage employers will provide, or ask their employees to pay for.
If history is an accurate indicator, many employers will consider eliminating specialty health coverage , most notably dental and vision , to alleviate part of the financial burden.
Many employers’ misconceptions about the importance of dental health influence their decisions on whether to maintain specialty health care coverage. They often consider oral health a secondary component to overall health and dental coverage as an elective benefit of only secondary concern. This is an unfortunate and misguided view.
The fact of the matter is oral health and general health are connected; oral health ultimately contributes to good general health and conversely, poor oral health is a precursor to a surprising number of serious, costly medical conditions.
For example, research shows chronic oral infections can trigger diabetes, is linked to heart and lung disease, stroke, and is a contributing factor in low birth weight and premature births in newborns.
Unfortunately, those without dental insurance are far less likely , and in some cases unable , to receive preventive and routine dental services. In fact, having dental health care coverage is often a determining factor as to whether a person visits a dentist; those with dental coverage are nearly twice as likely to seek dental care compared to the uninsured.
In 1970, less than 6 million Americans had dental health care coverage. Today, oral health has improved tremendously in large part because more than 130 million Americans now have dental coverage.
Any loss of insurance coverage represents a giant step backward and will prevent many individuals from accessing the care they need. Ironically, the loss of dental coverage due to worsening economic conditions in the state has an impact on the economy due to lost productivity and higher medical costs.
Today, employed adults lose more than 164 million hours of work every year due to dental disease, while children miss 51 million hours of school as a result of dental illness. If these adults and children had received regular, preventive dental care, they would have spent less time in the dentist’s chair and more time on the job and at school.
Even in ideal economic times, the ability of employers to offer affordable, quality coverage is compromised by over-regulation and efforts to “mandate” benefits. In times of economic uncertainty, the negative impacts are magnified and often result in consumers losing specialty coverage altogether, adding to the ranks of the more than 17 million Californians who are without dental coverage.
What we need to realize is oral health is not secondary to general health, but rather as an inseparable component of it. In so doing, we actually offer the California economy a much-needed boost through a productive work force that can focus on the delivery of goods and services instead of on a toothache.
Harris serves as president of the California Association of Dental Plans, vice president and chief dental officer for PacifiCare Dental and Vision and serves on the board of directors for the National Association of Dental Plans.
