> "Financial aspects of dental radiography also deserve further study," Feit added
No joke. That is a major money maker. There is minimal cost per-use and your insurance pays $200 for it (my last one was $186.00 for instance). The dentists would be crazy not to recommend them as of often as possible.
Fluoride "rinses" are likely up there too. Rinse for a few seconds and they charge the insurance $50 or something for it.
Interestingly, I lived in Central Europe for a while and all my private dentists just used visual inspection for teeth. I never had an issue with that, all decay was spotted in time and in many cases earlier than with the x-ray only method, because more attention was paid to how the teeth look up-close, at all angles.
However, the visual inspection takes more time and skill. One might argue x-ray is the cheaper and quicker option. Though it costs more to the patient in many cases. Ah, the world of dentistry.
I had some dentist that figured out a way to bill my insurance once every 6 months and get paid. He was insistent I get X-Rays every 6 months as a result. I quit going to that dentist.
Fair point. And with fluoridated water and toothpaste, is the dentist checking the dosages? It's probably fine anyway, but paying an tens of dollars for it seems excessive. And like you said, get a bottle for rinsing at home, it's a lot cheaper than $40 per rinse.
Fluoride may potentially have some negative effects but we’ve been drinking Florida red water across the world for several decades and different countries have added fluoridation at different times etc, and it’s hard to see any severe effect that would qualify it as anything close to “madness”.
Remember the old adage--it's the dose that makes the poison. There is *nothing* that is not lethal if consumed in sufficient quantity. That includes *everything* that we require to live, although in some cases it becomes effectively impossible to ingest a lethal amount.
Thus showing that something is toxic doesn't mean it's something you should never consume. And note that fluoridation started because it was observed that the people in areas with higher natural levels benefited.
> There is *nothing* that is not lethal if consumed in sufficient quantity.
To be fair, the quantity of fluorine that would kill you if you consumed it is too small to notice. What's saving you from the fluoride isn't that there isn't enough fluorine to be dangerous - it's that the fluorine is accompanied by things that make it less dangerous.
Table salt is 60% highly toxic chlorine, but you're free to coat your food in it because it's 40% sodium, too. In combination, they're fine and in fact necessary to life. Consumed separately in equal amounts, either would kill you. The quantity isn't what matters.
What's added to tap water isn't the compound used in aluminum refining. Thus they would have to separate it out and at that point they can simply react it with aluminum and continue to use it. There's nothing to discard.
If it was “highly toxic” it would be obvious because people would be getting sick or dying after ingesting it. Maybe it’s got some issues that aren’t obvious, but there’s not a clear answer.
However you don’t swallow mouth rinses like Act, so any nonobvious issue is also greatly reduced.
I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids
Higher education in Norway is free so a dentist starts with much less debt to pay off. Also the income range in general is much narrower here. Mean income for dentists is about 900 kNOK/yr, about 90 kUSD.
I suspect that it's also a question of market forces. A dentist that charged much more for an annual check would simply lose that business as there are plenty of dentists here. And quite likely they would lose any follow up work as well.
The profit margin on treatment is much higher but even that seems cheaper than what some of my US friends say they pay (or their insurance pays). Here's the price list for my dentist. In Norwegian but Google Translate does a good job:
They do some cosmetic work as well, I imagine that the profit margins are higher for that.
I have two crowns, both created by an automated process of 3D photography and CNC machine in the clinic (Cerec). The most recent one went like this: I made an appointment to see my dentist at about 8:30 one morning complaining of toothache, she discovered that an old amalgam filling had cracked and taken part of the tooth with it and that the only practical repair was a crown. She then apologised profusely that she didn't have time to do it there and then but could I come back at 13:00 that afternoon? I said yes and by 13:30 the crown had been manufactured, fitted, ground down to an exact fit and I was leaving. The crown was a bit over 5 kNOK altogether, about 500 USD, for half an hour's work. The price has gone up a little since.
None of the work I have done, including the annual check-up, is done by a dental assistant, poorly paid or otherwise. I think that this might be because of the high cost of employing anyone in Norway.
I'd say they're in the upper percentiles here in Norway when it comes to making money. Especially if they're having a small privat clinic instead of "renting a chair". So maybe not too much when converted USD, but they're often well off here.
I've had the dentist themselves always do most of the work. The assistant is often shared between multiple dentists in the same office in my experience.
My dentist in New Zealand is about USD200 every six months for the gold plated option. The x-ray is free. Dentists are relatively well paid in New Zealand. Looks like helping hygienist gets USD25-USD30 per hour. Minimum wage in NZ is about USD14/hr for unskilled labour or poorly paying food service jobs.
My friend is getting an implant and the total cost is about USD8000. The government is covering most of it because it was an accident (sporting).
It's pretty similar in the UK for private dentistry, x-rays ~£10-30, hygienist/scale/polish ~£50-120, filling ~£70-150, root canal/extraction ~£120-300.
Dentist salaries seem to range between £70-200k depending on experience, specialty, etc.
Very similar prices in Spain too, funny how the UK is generally considered _very_ expensive for dental work, in fact I just paid 40 EUR for an x-ray here yesterday.
Quite happy paying £26.80 / £73.50 for all of that.
It's in a country's interests to help maintain the public's health, and that includes subsidising their dental costs (otherwise, they end up taking up primary care time instead).
For sure, stuff like implants, cosmetic dentistry, braces, crowns etc. still cost a non-trivial amount (though hopefully most are once in a lifetime things).
All I'm seeing here is insurance, yet again, over-complicated or increasing the price of things and dentists doing what they can to continue to make a buck while they're severely underpaid for their other procedures.
Those prices are insane... I wonder if it's due to the insurance f-up of the whole health system in the USA (i.e. ballooning the prices because "insurance will pay"))
No joke. That is a major money maker. There is minimal cost per-use and your insurance pays $200 for it (my last one was $186.00 for instance). The dentists would be crazy not to recommend them as of often as possible.
Fluoride "rinses" are likely up there too. Rinse for a few seconds and they charge the insurance $50 or something for it.