A twelve year-old boy has died because an infection from a toothache spread to his brain. A comedy of errors in the Medicaid system turned what should have been only an $80 tooth extraction into $250,000 worth of medical treatment that saw the patient die anyway.

Now, let me be clear: I don't mean this to be an indictment of the American healthcare system in particular. I think that even in Canada where we have socialized medicine, this could well have happened. As the article states, dental care is an area that falls through the rips in the social safety net.

And the sad part of it is, there doesn't really seem to be any way to fix it.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17372104/