Dental caries can kill - that's how the guy that played Lorne on Angel died - so we're talking about more than "cutting down on a few bucks of dental care expenses".
TFA doesn't even mention death by caries, only the savings. If avoiding those deaths was the reason, I guess lithium would have been used before fluoride. I don't know the stats, but I know of several people that committed suicide in my area and never heard of a single death by caries.