Actually, I broke the silly tooth while eating... a jellybean! One quarter of it sheared off. I have been remarkably pain free, however. It turned out the nerve inside the tooth was 50% necrotic so while he was doing the crown prep (which honestly bothers me more than a root canal - it's a solid 10 minutes of drilling to drill the tooth down to its surface) he managed to enter the pulp canal, which was inflamed and under some pressure anyway, so it was clear a root canal was needed. He ripped out the nerve itself (which honestly was not painful, and in my previous ones the twang only hits you for a second, so even that is not bad). Then he did a little prep with the files going in and cleaning out the canal pathways (which is completely painless).
What gets me is about two hours after the procedure when the throbbing starts, which is why I got my Vicodin script. But I only needed two tablets over that day, and I have been totally pain-free. The worst part was the freakin bill.
I have to go back next Monday at 9am to finish clearing out the canal, then wait another two weeks for the permanent crown to arrive and get glued on.
Dental coverage is awful in the United States. You pay a lot per month and end up with a $1000-1500 maximum plus often a 50% co-pay. For someone who is self-employed, the monthly insurance rate adds up to $1000 a year anyway, so there is absolutely no point in having the insurance.
Medical coverage is also outrageous. I just dropped our highly rated Blue Cross plan (Blue Choice - an HMO) for Preferred Care, a competing plan. For John and I, the monthly premium was around $700 with Blue Choice and they were raising the prescription drug co-pay to $7 for tier one (generics), $50 for tier two (expensive generics + moderately priced/common brand names), and $100 for tier three (newest brand name drugs mostly). John takes two blood pressure pills so that would have been $150 a month just for those. Forget it. Preferred Care charges us around $650 a month I think, and the co-pays are $10/$25/$40.
Insurance locally has been going up around 12% a year. It's already well beyond most people's car payments, and within a decade, it is likely going to exceed a lot of mortgage payments. We're approaching the breaking point. Yes, the health care quality is often the best in the world with not a lot of waiting and often a choice in providers, but it's becoming unaffordable for the middle class with no end in sight. There should be a way of devising a hybrid system similar to a social medicine program but with some built-in choices and perhaps some private insurance add-ons for greater choice in medications or providers.