The Brighter.com “2011 Survey of Dental Care Affordability and Accessibility” conducted by Empirica research along with University of Southern California professor Dr. David Neal has shown that about half of all Americans do not have dental insurance, and that in 2010, the premiums for dental coverage rose by a much greater amount than those for medical insurance.
This fact, in combination with the struggling economic times, is meaning that an increasing number of people are pushing dental care down on their priority lists because they feel they cannot afford it.
According to the CEO of Brighter.com, founder Jake Winebaum, said that the high rates of unemployment and the recession are placing a larger amount of the dental care burden onto budgets that are already highly strained.
He explained that because of this, the survey’s results are suggesting that an “alarming” percentage of individuals are not receiving proper preventative care. He said that this is “largely due to high cost and lack of insurance coverage. And something needs to be done about it.”
Though there is some unpleasantness connected with the experience of a dentist appointment, the survey still showed that the top reason that people gave for delaying this care was the high expense associated with it, as well as the lack of transparency relating to those costs, and the challenge involved in trying to find a good dentist.
Winebaum also noted that as a parent he found it surprising and upsetting to know that almost 50 percent of the respondents had put off the dental care for their children.
