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I work for a small company, we do have health insurance (got it about 9 months ago). But we have no dental insurance. Well of course my tooth shot craps. I knew as soon as it happened I was looking at a root canal. Well in my area thats at least $500.00 for the first visit plus the cost of the cap (average for everything round $2000.00). Well I told my boss (the owner of the company) that I was going to be missing at least one full day of work because my tooth was in very bad pain. We talked for a while, with me telling him over and over, that the only place I could afford to go to was where all the meth heads go to. Its a cash and carry clinic in a not so good area (you walk in take a number, they demand cash up front, and you only get the amount of work you have cash on hand for). In any event to make a long story short, I am very important to my boss, I assist him in many ways. So he made me promise not to go to the meth doctor. So I waited, and on the third day I told him I am leaving, going to get my number and get this tooth pulled and the root killed, can't eat, hurt all the time. With that he went in to hyper drive. Up shot he took me to a dentist he knows, waited while the dentist saved the tooth (full root canel, vs the remove it option). He then negotiated 15% off the total cost and paid for my follow up visit. So I am taken care of,now here is the click. While driving to fill my prescription (it was a full snow storm and he did not want me driving round while medicated or in pain, I told you I was one of his favorites), the light went off in his head. He started in on a long ramble about how he can't afford to have me or any of his core staff missing work for long stretches due to an oral infection. He then talked about how expensive dental care was, he had no idea that it cost so much. With that he looks over at me and goes we need dental. Please go and find some options for dental, I don't want to loose you or any of my staff over something like this, it could happen to any one. So the value of having healthy employees hit him upside the head, and he came to the conclusion that it's less expensive to assist us with insurance than to loose his employees productivity because they are in pain. So here is my question, why don't most employees see this. In my case I am close to the owner of the company. We work together every day, when he faced loosing me over a tooth for a few days, and the possibility of a long term loss of me due the good odds of an infection if I did not get some dental care now, he saw the value of insurance. So is that what its going to take to get insurance for all, a boss who faces loosing their key person?
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