How the Poor Become Toothless.

For reasons which would be too complex and tedious to explain, I decided to change my dentist. The one I’ve been with for the last nineteen years is an inner city practice twenty five miles away, and it struck me it would be much more sensible to switch to one in the local town seven miles away.

It won’t have escaped anybody’s notice that I’m not very well off, so there’s no way I can afford the super-inflated fees charged by private dentists. I’m strictly an NHS man, and would be even if I had plenty of money because I happen to believe in the principle on which the NHS was founded. So when I went shopping today, I called into the high profile one near the town centre to ask whether they took NHS patients.

I knew I was onto a loser the moment I walked in. It was full of leather sofas and other expensive fittings, and the woman receptionist was true to type. She was middle aged and had a face made ugly by the firm set of superiority and tram line conformity. Her hair was permed – neatly, of course – her seemingly starched uniform pristine in muted colours, and the poker up her anus apparent for all to perceive. Such pokers perform various functions, the most important of which is to transmit a negative vibe to riff-raff like me.

‘Do you take NHS patients?’ I asked.

‘We don’t have an NHS contract, no,’ she replied with a smile that carried subtle hints of malevolence and triumphalism. (This is, of course, the diplomatic way of saying ‘We only deal with rich people here.’) She continued:

‘Would you like one of our booklets?’

‘No, I’d like you tell me whether there’s an NHS dentist in the town.’

The smile achieved an extra curve of disdain.

‘There is, yes. It’s on the outskirts of the town, beyond the hospital, at the top of a steep hill.’

Well, it would be, wouldn’t it? I left the dear woman to enjoy her triumph and went about my shopping.

I found the NHS dentist later, and the woman had been either mistaken or lying. It was, indeed, beyond the hospital, but it stood at the side of the main road in full view. And it was closed for lunch, so I went home.

On a general note, I wonder whether I’m being naïve in thinking that those who enter healing professions should have service as their overriding principle. Make a living at it by all means, but is it right that they should make such huge profits, earn such inflated salaries, and only be available to people with plenty of money? Aren’t there certain things, like health, that just shouldn’t be subject to free market forces and blatant profiteering?

OK, I’m being naïve, and I should count myself lucky anyway. At least we have a National Health Service in Britain (although even that is now partly subject to free market forces, courtesy of the bitch in blue, and people are dying needlessly because managers of NHS Trusts are more interested in profits and statistics than they are in people.) I could live somewhere like America where, as far as I can tell, everything is run that way.