King Kevin

[kevin_standlee]

...because I'm now crowned. Twice (rearmost two lower right teeth), plus the one I already have. And another in the pipeline, as my dentist looked at the chipped tooth and said it's going to need a crown, too, although if it doesn't get any worse, maybe we can hold off until January. I really need to do that unless there's a major failure, because I've used up my entire dental benefit and exhausted my HCSA/FSA for this year. (In retrospect, I should have put aside $4K instead of $3K in my FSA; however, since you lose anything you don't use in the calendar year, I'm leery of over-withholding. How the heck are you supposed to predict these things? FSA's shouldn't expire every calendar year!) Everything resets in January and I'll come back then to get tooth 29 crowned.

The crowns feel funny, but I think that's because I now have gold-crown-on-gold-crown contact, on account of the upper tooth that was already crowned after the root canal earlier this year. I need to get used to the slightly different way my teeth mesh now, and try to not use that premolar for the next five months.

Comments

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

I take it by "we had a better system" you mean simply that you had a system better than the one you have now, rather than that it used to be better than other countries'?
It seems from the outisde that it's always had serious problems such as impossible to afford premiums for small businesses, particularly the self-employed. This latest change is just the next step along the road of the idiocy of thinking of it as "insurance".

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Yes, better than the current system. Almost every civilised country has a better system than the US does.