South-of-the-border dentistry

HUMBERTO CASPA

Being a few hours away from the border city of Tijuana has some

advantages. After all, not everything found there is negative.

Yes, for some kids, especially teenagers, Tijuana might be the

road to perdition. But for me, my wife, some Latino residents, and

others in the Newport-Mesa community, Tijuana is the place where we

can afford a dental insurance plan.

For many American families today, health and dental insurance

isn’t an easy picture to look at.

The latest figures are staggering and are poignant reminders that

someone -- in government or the private sector -- has to do something

to bring down the negative numbers in the health-care system.

About 43 million Americans don’t have health insurance, 600,000 in

Orange County, according to the Coalition of Orange County Community

Clinics.

Also, over half of the population doesn’t have dental insurance.

To make matters worse, most employers today are using every resource

available to cut down dental benefits in their health plans to reduce

aggregate costs.

For part-timers, who neither have health benefits nor dental

insurance, the situation gets a lot eerier. I guess given my

employment status and lacking insurance benefits, I fit perfectly

within this bracket.

I have four part-time jobs, and none of them pays well. For a

variety of reasons, every one of them refuses to give me a kind of

health benefit that would get me out of this situation. Dental

insurance is the least thing my employers can offer me, or my family.

So, for the time being, as long as a decent full-time job floats

around above my head and never gets down, I won’t be able to enjoy a

sound dental plan.

In situations like this one, when everything seems somber, the

best strategy is to calm down, and to not act melodramatic. On the

contrary, we must remind ourselves that al mal tiempo buena cara (in

stormy weather, one must show calmness).

After all -- as movie actor and director Roberto Benigni said in

his acclaimed motion picture -- life is beautiful. Instead of

pondering about society’s failures for not bringing justice to all,

or blaming our misfortunes entirely on the system, I sometimes find

myself looking for loopholes in it to move on and ahead.

Here is the situation. My wife has a full time job, and I don’t.

Although her job provides her some health benefits, it doesn’t give

her dental insurance. In the end, both of us end up in the same

bucket, with no dental benefits. And coincidentally, both of us had,

at one point, an urgent need to visit a dentist for repairs and

fillings.

In a country where the smile is valued so much, and having nice

white teeth can actually be a reflection of the person’s character

and individuality, my wife and I thought we just couldn’t afford to

lose a tooth or two. Thus having the fillings was not an alternative

but rather an implicit obligation for us to move ahead.

We could have done the dental work at a local dentist near my

house, or we even could have found one in Santa Ana, where prices

aren’t as inflated. Instead, we decided to take a morning off, drive

to Tijuana, and find a decent dentist.

Here is how it happened:

We got to Tijuana, drove around the central streets, trying to

find a few possible alternatives besides the one recommended by a

friend of ours. First, we walked in a few dental offices in downtown.

Two of them looked quite sophisticated, one was even nicer than some

I saw in Orange County. Prices were reasonable. Of course, a lot

lower than those offered in our hometown.

They told us that our American insurance could actually cover the

cost of the dental service. We almost stayed there, but we continued

our journey to find our designated dentist in the southern part of

the city.

When we got there, we were not disappointed at all. Although the

dental office was smaller than the ones we visited downtown,

everything was very clean and modern looking. Two hours later, my

wife and I were done. We each paid Dr. Francisco Togo $40 for the

cleaning and the filling. Compared with the more than $300 we would

have paid in the U.S., we thought it was an incredible bargain.

As we headed back to the border, we saw similar dentist offices in

other areas of the city. For the most part, those in downtown appear

to specially cater to Americans looking for inexpensive dental work.

However, some of them in the outskirts of the city didn’t look as

good, and didn’t appear to be places frequented by Americans anyway.

The further we got away from downtown, the cheaper they became,

and the lesser in quality.

How good are the dentists in Tijuana? Of course most businesses

and interests associated with the American Dental Association will

mock the dentists. However, those of us who have visited and have

received dental service here and in Tijuana found no major

differences between them. Perhaps the major distinction is in prices.

As one person told me, she doesn’t have any problem driving two

hours for a dentist in Tijuana.

I don’t either.

* HUMBERTO CASPA is a Costa Mesa resident and bilingual writer. He

can be reached by e-mail at hcletters@yahoo.com.