but I wonder how many of those people knew that they can walk into the ER on weekends at John Dempsey UConn MC for dental emergencies and get treated regardless of ability to pay?

http://sdm.uchc.edu/patients/emergency.html

My brother went Saturday for an abscessed cracked tooth and was scheduled for an extraction today. He has HUSKY (Medicaid) so he's insured, but even if he wasn't, he'd have been treated. They wouldn't sedate him though and was only given ibuprofen for palliative care. For a free/cheap extraction, I can handle that along with having my dentistry done by a resident or intern. They gave him grief for not coming in sooner...if he'd gone in January when it first started to bother him rather than waiting for the tooth to abscess and break, he could have gotten it filled.

I may go next weekend I have free. I need 2 root canals and am still, alas, unemployed.

Our dental care system is completely broken. If one wants to determine your social class, all that must be done is to see if you are missing any teeth.