Dental restoration post tx

Hi Deb. I had some dental work before rads, medicare paid. After rads when things started to go bad, my radiation Onc wrote a letter for Medicare's review. My oral surgeon also wrote that extractions and HBO were medical necessities to preserve my jaw bone. Medicare paid everything 100%, there was no wrangling. I was told before rads started that I should look after my teeth. used biofene toothpaste 3, 4 times a day and fluoride trays. It staved things off for 2 years then teeth started to break, never had any pain just breakage. had some removed  (went through HBO for that) 8 months later he decided to remove the remainder, more HBO, right thing to do, both cosmetically and jaw wise. have had no trouble since. There is, however, a major obstacle that will be standing in everybody's way from here on in, Obamacare. Cutbacks are already happening across the board in healthcare, the days of regular scans, especially pets, is over, cutting hundreds of billons out of medicare is gutting it. If you have insurance through your employer or such, shock is about to set in. Insurance companies, in trying to contain the premium increases it would have to make have opted for reducing the benefits in the plan, you will be seeing more PA's in the future and appointments will become limited. Example, I saw my gastro guy (PA) in May, had to have tests, was told follow up appontment would be in November, all tests were ok. My wife had an endoscopy done for her GERD, her co-pay was $300, it used to be $100. I suggest that if you need to get things done, do it now before it gets worse. I was an HR director for 20 years and intimately involved in health insurance and such. Denis

denistd said:

Paying for it

Hi Deb. I had some dental work before rads, medicare paid. After rads when things started to go bad, my radiation Onc wrote a letter for Medicare's review. My oral surgeon also wrote that extractions and HBO were medical necessities to preserve my jaw bone. Medicare paid everything 100%, there was no wrangling. I was told before rads started that I should look after my teeth. used biofene toothpaste 3, 4 times a day and fluoride trays. It staved things off for 2 years then teeth started to break, never had any pain just breakage. had some removed  (went through HBO for that) 8 months later he decided to remove the remainder, more HBO, right thing to do, both cosmetically and jaw wise. have had no trouble since. There is, however, a major obstacle that will be standing in everybody's way from here on in, Obamacare. Cutbacks are already happening across the board in healthcare, the days of regular scans, especially pets, is over, cutting hundreds of billons out of medicare is gutting it. If you have insurance through your employer or such, shock is about to set in. Insurance companies, in trying to contain the premium increases it would have to make have opted for reducing the benefits in the plan, you will be seeing more PA's in the future and appointments will become limited. Example, I saw my gastro guy (PA) in May, had to have tests, was told follow up appontment would be in November, all tests were ok. My wife had an endoscopy done for her GERD, her co-pay was $300, it used to be $100. I suggest that if you need to get things done, do it now before it gets worse. I was an HR director for 20 years and intimately involved in health insurance and such. Denis

Thanks Denis. I will get with Jim's oncologist for a recommendation to his medicare/insurance company.

Debbie

denistd said:

future

Yeah Don, looks like lots of thinking has to to start. October 1 the exchanges open, but in truth they won't be ready. The exchange will offer 3 plans bronze. silver and gold, if you are of limited income you can apply for subsidies. You will see that new people here on the forum are not getting scans after treatment, mostly scopes and x-rays, maybe one Ct or two. That will be the new protocol as insurance comapanies start to get squeezed out of business. Dental costs have become utterly ridiculous with no real dental insurance available. I know my dental costs were astronomical, lucky that Medicare paid for it, but I fear the money won't be there to cover much in the coming years, you cannot reduce funding $800,000,000,000 (that's eight hundred billon, hope there's enough 0's there) over ten years and maintain the level of care we are used to. Pretty grim looking for our kids and grandkids.

I have read so much about teeth as thats my biggest dread to lose my teeth. I've made sure they are in good nic before rad but still its not a guarantee I wont lose them. If the onc dentist removes them then he makes good after with dentures or whatever free of charge if I decide to not to have teeth removed before rad and at a later date my teeth rot I then have to go to my dentist. He's a private dentist but as I was a patient of his before he went private he kept me on for free. (NHS). I was a carer at the time looking after my mother full time and had to give up work so I'm glad he took pity on me. I,ve been with him many years and feel at ease with him he's never hurt me doing work on my teeth. I saw him today and the first thing he did was to pull up a chair and ask me about my op, said how he feels for his patients when something like this happens he then checked my teeth filed a pointed tooth a little because it caught the scarring in my mouth where the tongue flap was taken from. He then recommended Duraphat 5000ppm floride toothpaste to be used sparingly for the time I needed it. He even let me have it for half the cost and apologised for having to charge for it. I feel sorry that your costs are so high, I believe from what my sister tells me (shes now an American citizen) that medicare costs the earth if you can afford it otherwise you have to pay for doc and dentist in full. She has a good insurance plan as her husband was military and now she has medicare or something but because she has such a good insurance everytime she goes to the docs they find something wrong with her sell her drugs via insurance then a year down the line tell her she didn't have that wrong with her but now because of that she needs more drugs and so on. They put a pacemaker in her then two years later said she didn't need it. I'm not knocking your system as I expect not all docs are like that (yes, she has changed docs)  A lot of people knock our NHS but I find its great and has been for all my family. They got on my case as soon as I was diagnosed. Reading all the posts on this site everyone has a very good team of doctors.