Dentistry Throughout The World - United States

United States

In the United States dentistry is generally practiced by dentists who have completed a post-graduate course of professional education. With exception of rural Alaska, Dental therapists are not permitted to practice in the United States. Use of dental therapists, dental health aids, or dental hygienists to independently perform routine fillings or cleaning is strongly opposed by the American Dental Association, (the A.D.A.), the dentists' professional association. This has resulted in excellent but high-priced treatment which, however, fails to delivers services at a reasonable price to the lower social classes. With only a few exceptions, neither government-sponsored health care programs such as Medicare nor Medicaid cover routine dental treatment. As a result large sections of the population do without. The worst conditions are in Kentucky and West Virginia.

Rates for dental services have been rising rapidly, out pacing the rate of inflation. After falling for many years, the percentage of both adults and children with unfilled cavities began to rise in 2000 as did the percentage of adults with no teeth. Increasingly, people with adequate income to pay the fees are forgoing treatment.

Read more about this topic:  Dentistry Throughout The World

Famous quotes related to united states:

    In the United States all business not transacted over the telephone is accomplished in conjunction with alcohol or food, often under conditions of advanced intoxication. This is a fact of the utmost importance for the visitor of limited funds ... for it means that the most expensive restaurants are, with rare exceptions, the worst.
    John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)

    Places where he might live and die and never hear of the United States, which make such a noise in the world,—never hear of America, so called from the name of a European gentleman.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    In the United States adherence to the values of the masculine mystique makes intimate, self-revealing, deep friendships between men unusual.
    Myriam Miedzian, U.S. author. Boys Will Be Boys, introduction (1991)

    Greece is a sort of American vassal; the Netherlands is the country of American bases that grow like tulip bulbs; Cuba is the main sugar plantation of the American monopolies; Turkey is prepared to kow-tow before any United States pro-consul and Canada is the boring second fiddle in the American symphony.
    Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko (1909–1989)

    An inquiry about the attitude towards the release of so-called political prisoners. I should be very sorry to see the United States holding anyone in confinement on account of any opinion that that person might hold. It is a fundamental tenet of our institutions that people have a right to believe what they want to believe and hold such opinions as they want to hold without having to answer to anyone for their private opinion.
    Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)