
Rural America has too few dentists — and too few patients who can pay - petethomas
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/06/07/feature/rural-america-has-too-few-dentists-but-also-too-few-jobs-to-create-paying-patients/
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anoncoward111
Ironically a tooth extraction is one of the cheapest and least complex
surgeries that someone could perform. The non insured price is something like
$70-200 dollars, and many charities perform them at no cost to the consumer.

There are people that even extract their own teeth.

Now obviously nobody wants to deal with this pain, it can be a damaging and
horrific procedure with some long term complications. But it's cheap and will
save your life if your tooth is truly in danger.

The real issue is that licensing and tuition for dentists is too restrictive.
In Asia, many dental procedures are cheap and are done by unlicensed
professionals.

If I couldn't afford anything but an unlicensed dentist, I'd still give it a
shot.

~~~
taxicabjesus
> The real issue is that licensing and tuition for dentists is too
> restrictive.

The guilds have designed professions that pay well. Over-education is not
required for most of their tasks, so the grunt work is passed off to
inexpensive hygienists/nurse practitioners/etc.

The Arizona legislature has been considering allowing dental hygienists (er,
"therapists") to work independent of their DDS overlords, but the dentists
have been fighting back:
[https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/health/2017/0...](https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/health/2017/01/23/push-
for-dental-therapy-in-arizona-stalls-amid-legislative-resistance/96836364/)

~~~
anoncoward111
Right, the dentists have been fighting back because they would rather see
people die of infections than let a low cost provider jeopardize their salary.

Physically sickening.

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bediger4000
This sounds like the market is working, to me. Who wants to work for no pay?
Not I! I'm a free market fundamentalist!

