News

I received a notice from my local health system with the heading “be kind.” Scripps Health in San Diego County is concerned that patients “be kind, be patient, be understanding.”

Do masks keep us apart or allow us to be together? I never thought, in all my years of wearing masks as a dentist, that a mask made a political statement. I knew about anti-vaxxers, but I’d never heard of anti-maskers.

We want personalized medicine,
but pain patients are supposed to be
treated the same, with acetaminophen and ibuprofen. Dentists are discouraged from prescribing opiates.

The term “intergenerational equity” is common in policy advocates’ vocabulary. It is the idea of fairness between generations. To give an example, the dues of CDA Life Active Members was just
raised dramatically.

In my editorial last year, I was hoping that 2017 would usher in a year of “making dentistry great again.” It doesn’t seem that has happened, instead there is division and divisiveness, and we have
to be careful how to speak to our patients about current events.

We are at a challenging health policy crossroads. I write this days before Donald Trump is inaugurated
as President. He, his choice for Secretary of the US Department of Health & Human Services, and the Republican-led Congress are all poised to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act (ACA).