Op-ed: Dental therapists could help people get care needed in Washington state

Each week, children and adults with urgent problems that shouldn’t have happened are admitted to 14 dental clinics I operate. These include very young children with advanced cavities who have already had dental procedures under general anesthesia. We also see working parents who put up with dental pain on the job until they can’t take it anymore.

For far too many people, the current dental system isn’t working. Health insurance that covers dental care is scarce. Even for those who have it, affordable care is hard to find.

We dentists see only 55 percent of the public. That’s a lot of unmet need building up, to be fixed later at great expense after too much unnecessary pain.

Read the rest of the article from The Seattle Times.

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