State Sen. Ray “Tooth Fairy” Cleary’s bizarre, nanny state proposal to solve South Carolina’s academic woes by implementing taxpayer-funded, government-administered dental care to poor children made the pages of La Socialista today.
Which figures, because this is precisely the sort of feelgood ridiculousness they love over there.
Except Cleary’s “tooth treatise” didn’t actually “make the pages” of La Socialista (they cut those pages out, remember?), it made the vastly-ignored Internet wasteland that is the newspaper’s online “Opinion Extra” section.
Thankfully, that’s about the only place stories promoting socialist tooth fairy bills are able to find a home in this new marketplace of ideas.
Well, aside from the wildly-popular Ray Cleary YouTube Channel, obviously.
Anyway, from L’Online Socialista:
This bill, recently approved by a Senate Medical Affairs subcommittee, would create the position of community oral health coordinator within the Department of Health and Environmental Control. We need your help to be sure this bill becomes law.
A coordinator would work with schools, students, families and local providers to remove barriers to children’s dental care by providing oral health education and training, coordinating transportation and other non-clinical support to patients and their families, and linking dentists who provide Medicaid services (or would provide free or reduced-cost care) for children identified during a screening as not having a regular dentist.
Good God. This abomination is even worse than we originally thought.
Not only is it another unnecessary expansion of Medicaid with absolutely no mention of cost (at a time when we can least afford such things), it’s a friggin’ brand new state government bureaucracy, too!
And since Sen. Cleary is a dentist, there’s no conflict of interest or anything.
Please, for the love of God, somebody kill this thing.
WEB EXTRA:
By Mab March 25, 2009 at 5:26 pm
He’s probably just a Nitros dealer gone mainstream…in senator’s clothing.
We’ve got quite a herd of dentists around here…they like to dabble in everything from legislating to sham Pontoon boat manufacturing to being advertising agencies for shyster solicitors.
By mackone March 25, 2009 at 8:57 pm
Ok, you have my attention on this one. I just had a chance to read the article and if my memory serves me correctly this was a free service through the Dental Association for good while until some bureaucraps stepped in and shut the program down. I believe it was also continued by some dental assistants but they were not “qualified”.
I am not a big fan of some of the cosmetic dentist approach that seems to be the rage but I am in favor of a program that provides periodic screening for children at risk.
I have seen first had the lack of esteem that goes with people in your neighborhood with bad teeth. I know of teen agers who are embarrassed by the condition of their parents teeth.
No, we don’t need to add to the bulging cost of more medicaid cost for the state but we also have to consider that with the number of rich Dentist, well most of them say they are, surely this could be a program that could be administered more or less gratis. Or, has the Dental profession lost their servants heart as well as most of the other community service professions.
Let’s not judge to harshly what is obviously a misguided state legislator who is either off his meds or truly believes this should be another government program. Could there be some personal interest involved? Huh!
Too many times it is just another misguided soul who gets elected to the state legislatue,who for some unknown reason, maybe it’s the water at the State House, believes it makes them an expert on everything.
We don’t need experts, we need common sense in government and once and for all figure out what the government is supposed to play in the lives of its constituents.
By mackone March 26, 2009 at 9:40 am
Ok, you have my attention on this one. I just had a chance to read the article and if my memory serves me correctly this was a free service through the Dental Association for good while until some bureaucraps stepped in and shut the program down. I believe it was also continued by some dental assistants but they were not “qualified”.
I am not a big fan of some of the cosmetic dentist approach that seems to be the rage but I am in favor of a program that provides periodic screening for children at risk.
I have seen first had the lack of esteem that goes with people in your neighborhood with bad teeth. I know of teen agers who are embarrassed by the condition of their parents teeth.
No, we don’t need to add to the bulging cost of more medicaid cost for the state but we also have to consider that with the number of rich Dentist, well most of them say they are, surely this could be a program that could be administered more or less gratis. Or, has the Dental profession lost their servants heart as well as most of the other community service professions.
Let’s not judge to harshly what is obviously a misguided state legislator who is either off his meds or truly believes this should be another government program. Could there be some personal interest involved? Huh!
Too many times it is just another misguided soul who gets elected to the state legislatue,who for some unknown reason, maybe it’s the water at the State House, believes it makes them an expert on everything.
We don’t need experts, we need common sense in government and once and for all figure out what the government is supposed to play in the lives of its constituents.
BTW I love your blog!
By HOWARD BOND October 22, 2009 at 12:37 am
DENTAL HEALTH CARE IS IMPORTANT.
By Mark5inc November 23, 2009 at 4:10 am
Health care dentistry is definitely important.