I often wonder what I would do if I had to live on the minimum wage. I know that a visit to a dentist would be out of the question. The bill for my yearly checkup and cleaning was $150 — with no X-rays — and two small fillings cost $465. So my trip to the dentist would cost me more than 60 hours of minimum wages.

Maybe I could manage without the dentist, or simply have my bad teeth pulled. That’s the only dental treatment MaineCare provides.

Something I could not do without, however, is my EpiPen. I’m dangerously allergic to bee stings. My insurance company just informed me that they paid $586.33 for my new package, and my co-payment is $25.

Here again, if I lived on a minimum wage, I would have to decide whether to work for more than 60 hours to buy an EpiPen, or take my chances. Since it has been a while since I was stung last by a bee, I probably would risk doing without.

Why, as concerned citizens, don’t we deal with problems like this? We may have no use for this government, but we should expect it to make up for outrageous discrepancies like these.

Lore Ferguson

East Vassalboro