The missing ingredient in the US is a lack of public health infrastructure that universally covers poor people. Obama’s healthcare reform didn’t even cover every poor person in the country. But if we had that, adding in a fluoridation regime would be trivial. “Fluoridating tapwater is the cheapest way to get it to poor people” is only true because so many poor people in the US have no healthcare, period, so you have to set up all the infrastructure from scratch. Dumping it in the city water is cheaper than setting up real public health infra, but only before you factor in every other benefit of having public health infrastructure and all the cost savings across all of society caused by having public health infrastructure.
Neoliberals in the US love it because it’s one of those “smart” solutions that requires absolutely no national-level infrastructure, you just need companies with fluoride waste on one side, and municipalities willing to buy some on the other. You don’t have to make our society better, and what’s more, you can castigate opponents for hating poor people when really you’re the one preferring dumping a single chemical in the water to address a single type of dental problem instead of supporting actual public dental health infra in this country.
We fluoridate the water so we don’t have to actually help poor people with their health in this country.
The missing ingredient in the US is a lack of public health infrastructure that universally covers poor people. Obama’s healthcare reform didn’t even cover every poor person in the country. But if we had that, adding in a fluoridation regime would be trivial. “Fluoridating tapwater is the cheapest way to get it to poor people” is only true because so many poor people in the US have no healthcare, period, so you have to set up all the infrastructure from scratch. Dumping it in the city water is cheaper than setting up real public health infra, but only before you factor in every other benefit of having public health infrastructure and all the cost savings across all of society caused by having public health infrastructure.
Neoliberals in the US love it because it’s one of those “smart” solutions that requires absolutely no national-level infrastructure, you just need companies with fluoride waste on one side, and municipalities willing to buy some on the other. You don’t have to make our society better, and what’s more, you can castigate opponents for hating poor people when really you’re the one preferring dumping a single chemical in the water to address a single type of dental problem instead of supporting actual public dental health infra in this country.
We fluoridate the water so we don’t have to actually help poor people with their health in this country.