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It is a scenario playing out nationwide. From Oregon to Pennsylvania, hundreds of communities have in recent years either stopped adding fluoride to their water supplies or voted to prevent its addition. Supporters of such bans argue that people should be given the freedom of choice. The broad availability of over-the-counter dental products containing the mineral makes it no longer necessary to add to public water supplies, they say. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that while store-bought products reduce tooth decay, the greatest protection comes when they are used in combination with water fluoridation.
The outcome of an ongoing federal case in California could force the Environmental Protection Agency to create a rule regulating or banning the use of fluoride in drinking water nationwide. In the meantime, the trend is raising alarm bells for public health researchers who worry that, much like vaccines, fluoride may have become a victim of its own success.
The CDC maintains that community water fluoridation is not only safe and effective but also yields significant cost savings in dental treatment. Public health officials say removing fluoride could be particularly harmful to low-income families — for whom drinking water may be the only source of preventive dental care.
“If you have to go out and get care on your own, it’s a whole different ballgame,” said Myron Allukian Jr., a dentist and past president of the American Public Health Association. Millions of people have lived with fluoridated water for years, “and we’ve had no major health problems,” he said. “It’s much easier to prevent a disease than to treat it.”
According to the anti-fluoride group Fluoride Action Network, since 2010, over 240 communities around the world have removed fluoride from their drinking water or decided not to add it.
That’s unrelated with the need of prevention over having comprehensive healthcare coverage… I mean it’s not a bad point, but it’s unrelated.
Let healthcare be free for the patient thanks to magic money it still sucks to experience tooth decay that would have been prevented by chemically treating water as it’s always been.
Its not the magic of free money, thats literally what tax $ are for. And when the government pays for healthcare, suddenly, for some reason, they care more about legislation that keeps its citizens healthier. Stop eating the propaganda that private healthcare tries to sell you, universal healthcare is as free as libraries, paved roads in cities, and clean water in proper 1st world countries is. Private healthcare is more expensive in literally every sense than universal healthcare is.
tl:dr: You want flouridated water? A government that has to pay for the dental costs of its citizens is going to have a hell of a lot more incentive to keep flouridating the water as long as it doesnt cause healthcare costs elsewhere
I thiiiiink the point they’re trying to make is, why not both? It’s cheaper to have some kind of subsidized public healthcare, versus what we have now. Doing that, but then removing the fluoride from the water will still be cheaper than today’s plan, but more expensive than better healthcare AND fluoridated water. Why choose one when there’s no real reason not to have both?
I even put it in the Tl:dr though, a government paying for its citizens healthcare is likely going to push for Flouridated water, both is the default, “why not both” is a redundant argument, and OP is still referring to universal healthcare as “magic money” which is disingenuous, stupid, and a private healthcare propaganda sound byte