> Regular dental check-ups likely would have caught the tooth rot before it led to opioid addiction. Hopefully in time that a simple filling would suffice, but

> Regular dental check-ups likely would have caught the tooth rot before it led to opioid addiction. Hopefully in time that a simple filling would suffice, but even a non-urgent extraction or root canal is better than months/years of chronic pain. Quoting from this paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10035485/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10035485/ ...we found that limited information was reported on health outcomes in relation to quality of care within the context of UHC. In addition, there was a global lack of evidence on measures of quality of care related to UHC... Anecdotally, I have had access to rather cheap healthcare almost my entire life, but opted not to visit a dentist for 15 years. > From what I can tell, chronic pain eventually morphs into "background noise" in a person's life. This has been my experience, personally and vicariously. Edit: I realized the linked paper refers to lack of data on outcomes. That is not really the question here. However, it would be nice to get more data on outcomes. The question here is whether the individual would have visited a dentist without knowing there is an issue. I tried to find data on dental visits in universal healthcare systems vs non and could not find anything.