Monday, June 9, 2014

Aspen Dental or Teeth into Debt

Remember that saying, "If it is too good to be true it probably is", ? Well, it is still holding true. Some scams like the Nigerian emails are easy to spot and ideally, there would be better economics and finance education along with fair lending standards to render title loan businesses unnecessary and non-existent. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

When I saw the Coming Soon sign for Aspen Dental in my area, I thought it odd because of the high concentration of dental offices in the area. Instinctively, I thought, something is awry here, but I surrendered that thought to hope. I hoped that this would be for people of low incomes seeking dental care, what retail clinics are bringing to the basic medical care of those with low incomes--options and access. My hope was heightened after the building was complete and I began to see advertisements indicating Aspen provides affordable dental care for the uninsured and under-insured. This is fantastic, I thought. The free market at work. The needs of the people being meeting wealth generation sans predatory practice. Retail clinics have proved profitability is possible offering a needed service without fleecing the poor. Although research shows that most retail clinics are in areas of higher socio-economic status and fewer are in areas with health professional shortages, there has been little indication that the clinics have been used as fish farms for up-selling or incorrect diagnoses to generate additional income. There has been some concern related to unnecessary prescriptions being written and filled at the owning pharmacy. However, there have not been extensive studies to track and analyze the data. Thus, it was fair for me to have hopeful expectations of Aspen Dental and the other corporate dental facilities cropping up around the country. Silly me.

What I had compartmentalized, was what the dental industry had become in recent decades. The industry in and of itself had become an amalgam (pun intended) of upselling of cosmetic procedures and over-treatment. There is nothing inherently wrong with offering additional cosmetic services so long as the procedures are truly billed as such. Yet, in some cases, that wasn't what was happening. Healthy teeth are being drilled and filled. Teeth could be saved with basic dental procedures, yet the dental industry was promoting more expensive procedures that in extreme situations wouldn't be cosmetic, but in situations where there are options for saving a tooth versus extraction and replacement with an implant, an implant would be the "cosmetic" and or more expensive and thus more profitable for the practitioner option. Just take a look at some of the reports here. It is a real tragedy. The professionals with the knowledge and skills you should be able to trust are taking advantage of their patients.

Would Aspen Dental be the same? So far, it appears that the answer to that question is yes. While being marketed as affordable dental care, a Frontline investigation found several occurrences of low-income patients walking into offices for fillings or extractions and walking out with debt in the thousands for dentures that they didn't need. The investigation also found high pressure tactics being taught to office managers and care providers to be used on patients to meet billing quotas and revenue targets. What is really horrific is that along with treatment descriptions, patients are too frequently given credit applications to cover the cost of the expensive and unnecessary treatments. In effect, Aspen Dental is the pawn shop or title loan store for dental care. Patients who could be treated with inexpensive procedures are upsold expensive procedures and debt. Aspen Dental and its in house creditors win. Patients lose more than their teeth. They lose much needed money for years to come.

In situations like this, we can't and shouldn't rely upon government regulations to save our poor from this debt trap and tooth demon. We must educate all of our citizens on the dangers of predatory lending even in medical and dental care. We must also seek ethical practitioners and seek more information on their ethical and affordable payment plans for necessary treatment. What is happening in the dental industry, shouldn't be happening.

If you or someone you know as been a victim of Aspen Dental or any other corporate dental practice's unnecessary and unscrupulous treatment, contact your local Better Business Bureau at www.bbb.org so at the very least we can improve awareness of this issue. Your state consumer protection agency may also be able to help. The best help in these cases is prevention. Take care of your teeth and when problems arise, don't be misled by unethical practices. Search for reviews and recommendations from people you know and trust.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Stripping, the Sex Trafficking Gateway

Jada Pinkett Smith is in Atlanta shooting her CNN documentary on sex trafficking. During shooting, she had an epiphany that she shared on a CNN vlog. In her video, she shares what she has learned from interviewing women who are part of the sex trafficking industry. One of the women reveals that her entry into the industry started with her choosing to become a stripper. She began selling sexual favors intermittently and it has now become her life.
The woman began stripping with excitement, as a means of being one of those women who is aggrandized in hip hop culture, music, and now apparently contemporary culture. Hearing this, Jada and now I, realize the generational disparity. Like Jada, I was always told and my generational culture reinforced that stripping was for women from the bottom (Yes, this is the language/word used in my household). Stripping or so called erotic dancing was degrading and for women of lower or no class. That's it and that's all. There was nothing praiseworthy or respectable about this profession regardless of the amount of money earned or celebrity bedded.
What changed? When? Looking back, I now see the genesis of the cultural shift. Movies like The Players Club, which was released in 1998, ushered a more sympathetic view of stripping and became a cult classic in the process. In that movie, the main character, Diana, played by LisaRaye, is lured into stripping as a means of making more money she was making in retail to care for her child. Diana meets and begins dating a disc jokey (played by Jamie Foxx) and later leaves stripping becoming a reporter. Henceforth, stripping was idealized--becoming the contemporary fairytale, a stepping stone to a better life. I loathed the movie from the beginning and have yet to understand its appeal. The Players Club was not the only movie to depict stripping as a means to an end during that period. There was Striptease starring Demi Moore and Showgirls which was released in 1995.  These kinds of movies combined with the seemingly innocuous films like Pretty Woman change the perspective of stripping and prostitution to near fairytale status. Film was not the only industry to exalt stripping. The music industry has been the most significant influence of making stripping an appealing profession to young women who would have otherwise viewed it as a degrading profession. Insert almost any contemporary hip hop or rap song and any of several R & B songs and you'll hear at least one reference to the wonderful world of stripping. Women themselves have also joined the stripper glorification game with songs like Rihanna's Pour It Up
So what is the issue with stripping? Well, you take this pervasive cultural sanitation of a previously ignored and stigmatized profession and combine it with an industry that feeds upon these kinds of lax attitudes towards selling the simulation of sex (because truth be told, that is what stripping is) and selling sex and you have cornucopia of targets for the sex trafficking industry. Young women now view stripping as a job no different than being a hairstylist. I recently spoke with a stripper who told me she was "actually a real trained dancer." Stripping is a means to an end and not just any end nowadays. It is an avenue to become a video vixen who later becomes a reality television star and then an entrepreneur. It is a means to hundreds of thousands of YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook followers. In many a young girl's minds, it ends in fame and fortune, only that is far from how it ends for the majority of young women in the industry. Too often it ends in prostitution or sex trafficking.
It is a gateway profession which brings me back to Jada's epiphany. She says that it is her age that has distorted her understanding of this. Hearing this, I realize that I was on the cusp of this generational gap. I came of age or into womanhood during the period when entertainment first began to aggrandize stripping and had friends who didn't really think stripping was bad by any means. While others of us saw it as just an avenue to drug abuse and/or prostitution. Fast forward 15 years and more and more young girls and women see stripping as a means to meet and procreate with or marry a celebrity or to become a celebrity in their own right.
We must do better.