not a fan of USA healthcare

I met a dental surgeon yesterday to talk about my tori and the recent exposure of a point through the gum in my lower jaw.

1. I was glad to see that the surgeon received the medical records from my dentist. I never got my own copy, even though I filed the duplicate paperwork at the same time. *sigh*
   
   
2. In the lobby, I had to sign paperwork that said I was responsible for payments and understanding my own insurance. I absolutely do not understand my insurance. When looking for dental surgeons covered by Aetna, their webpage insisted across the 20 providers I checked on their webpage that the doctors were covered only for dental procedures, not medical. I don't know what that means for dental surgery to remove tori. It sounds like a setup for them to deny coverage and leave me filing for bankruptcy later.
   
   
3. Rather than an open-ended question like "What brings you here today?", the doctor opened with "I'm not seeing why you were referred to me." He listened to my story about the bone poking through the gum after the infection, looked inside my mouth once, saw no bone point sticking out (after the gums swelled up, reconnected over the bone, and finally sealed together again last week), and said intervention was not justified. As if everything I just said was a lie because he couldn't see it in front of him right now. He told me to "be careful with rough foods like toast and chips" and sent me on my way.

So I guess bone poking through my gums is just a thing that happens from now on?

I got home, looked up my decade-old post on that Mexican dental mega-complex at the USA border. They include this clinic that does maxillofacial surgery. I've emailed them this morning to ask if they do this kind of tori removal surgery. I'm hoping to get a "sight unseen estimate", so I could figure out if a trip to Mexico for surgery would even be feasible for me.

Because living with bone that pokes through gum tissue seems like a bad long term plan. On the plus side, now that immediate health insurance rigamarole seems unlikely, I'm back to job hunting again. People joke that the USA insurance miasma helps to keep people locked into jobs with their current employers... but it's true.