1) Just yesterday I went to a an acclaimed dental school (UNC) for low cost dental care. They not only gave me a panoramic x ray but also a full set of bite-wing x rays. I read this and I want to break the world apart this morning.
2) When I was a child I kep needing root canals. It turned out our dentist was making these all up and was later found passed out from laughing gas in his office.
I strongly suspect my dentist is making shit up, too. I had to refuse a couple of expensive treatments. The main goal seems to be to “use up” my dental insurance more than anything.
My dad has been a dentist for 30+ years and retired a few years ago.
Recently he did some 3-month contract work for a very large dental chain, let’s call it Penass.
I’ve never seen him so depressed in my live. He said that Penass’s business model was all about running up insurance and selling loans for large operations.
He was directly encouraged to do extra, not necessary work to run up the bill.
He came out of retirement after that and started another practice out of, what I can only guess, was frustration and guilt.
A lot of these large dental chains absolutely tack on extra work and do a shitty job to keep people coming back.
In the US, I highly recommend looking for independent “boutique” dentists. Even if they are out of your insurance network, a lot of them will give better rates if you pay in cash.
Hard agree. I left a local office that was staffed by a variety of dentists, and opted for one that had one specialist per procedure - one regular dentist, one implant specialist, etc.
Not only do you actually get to see the same person on every visit, they're not as likely to do this sort of thing.
I had a dental chain say I needed periodontal scaling because I was having terrible pain in my upper gums. It took two years and another dentist to tell me I actually had a cyst and the cyst growing had almost dissolved my nose bone. Another few months and I’d likely have a weird sunken nose if a surgeon hadn’t properly removed it. So they charged me for an expensive procedure but it wasn’t even the correct expensive procedure!
A private psychiatric hospital did this to me. I was voluntarily committed and they kept me for 10 days because that is how long Medicare would pay for. I was literally fine after the second day. Meanwhile a poor kid with horrible delusions was let out after three days after being involuntarily commuted and was still having active hallucinations. He had no healthcare at all.
The hospital has been under intense investigation by the local news.
This is the newest scam running, privatize health care so that these companies can rake in billions. I am sure this dental school probably gets millions for doing this.
Setting aside the unnecessary procedures bit, the “use up my dental coverage” isn’t a bad way to look at dental insurance. Those things are priced in a way that they are basically almost pre-paid “use it or lose it” products, especially if it is private dental insurance. If you aren’t coming close to maxing out your dental (or vision) insurance you can probably get by with less. And if all you are ever really getting is cleanings unless it is an employer paid plan just pay out of pocket (or with your fsa/hsa)
I’d much rather just pay out of pocket, but if I don’t get the “negotiated” price, it’s 2x to 3x the amount. This should be plainly illegal, but since it only affects the poor, nobody gives a shit.
I stopped going to dentists for years because two dentists in serial made up cavities. The first guy I let him drill. The second guy, a friend of my dad's (supposedly)I declined. This was in the early 1990s
I told this story to a friend years later and he said the same thing happened to him.
There is already an opaque bureaucracy that stands between me and my doctor. We do not have a free market in healthcare, so I cannot just choose another bureaucracy. I don't see how delegating this responsibility to a government agency can make it any worse for me.
This is not about education, it is about morality. So maybe they do need an education, but let that be in empathy and moralilty.
And why can't we have education AND universal healthcare? I want a government agnecy (the people) to control the morality of corporations and private equity. Like we have laws against fraud already that protects us from "unnecessary work done on their car to boost dealership profits".
Adding still, why would anyone be against universal healthcare? I mean it is the biggest insurance pool you can create and that immediately lowers costs.
ooh, dentists are very well educated in empathy and morality. They even have to take an ethical oath before they get their license. So is not lack of education, is greed and maybe a ton of student debt (or both).
I actually don't see how universal health care would help in this situation. Bad actors are going to try and milk whatever system pays the bills. Capitalism "should" be pretty good at taking care of this kind of stuff. I'm not sure why insurance companies aren't better at reining in these kind of abuses.
In my current environment there's the opaque and not really shared dental "fee guide" by the regulatory body, the actual fees each dentist charges, and then the % of the guide that the insurance pays, so if the insurance company keeps pressure on the governing body they don't really care what any dentist actually charges you.
> I'm not sure why insurance companies aren't better at reining in these kind of abuses.
I think they are working on it. My dentist has cameras shaped roughly like a toothbrush. Before and after performing work, they record images of the affected area. He says insurance likes them to thoroughly document their work to help justify the cost.
1) Just yesterday I went to a an acclaimed dental school (UNC) for low cost dental care. They not only gave me a panoramic x ray but also a full set of bite-wing x rays. I read this and I want to break the world apart this morning.
2) When I was a child I kep needing root canals. It turned out our dentist was making these all up and was later found passed out from laughing gas in his office.