When I was 11-12 or so an orthodontist attempted to remove one of my last remaining baby tooth without my parents knowledge and without anesthetic so he could sell my parents on braces. After causing a bloody mess he gave up and the tooth remained in use for some time after. Absolute psychopath.
A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones
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Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones
#42It's a bit off topic but I often wonder why dentistry is not a specialization of medicine (like e.g. dermatology) but is its own separate thing, with separate insurance, etc. Dental health is part of being healthy. A lot of dental work is surgery. To me, it should be part of regular medical care.
Dentistry is not a specialization of medicine, because if it were the dentist would be required to go through a full medical doctor education including hospital residency and then become a dentist on top of this, so it wouldn’t benefit the consumer in that the current policy is fine and actually it might make more sense to break other specializations off from medicine so that you can get more affordable treatments from people with specialized skills without needing an entire set of generalized skills.
Regarding funding, I agree that preventative care should be covered under health insurance like physical exams, because if you go for a cleaning twice a year you probably aren’t going to have many problems and if you don’t go for a cleaning twice a year you probably are going to have a lot of problems. But many dental treatments are cosmetic in nature and not medically necessary and probably would not be covered under the current health insurance regime in the United States, but are covered under the dental insurance regime. It’s important to note that dental coverage in the US is widely available as a separate part of “Obamacare” subsidized by the government and children’s coverage on the marketplace is even stronger without waiting periods and limits on max out of pockets in a way that is generous compared to most private offerings.
Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones
#43Problem is it’s impossible to tell with dentists for the layman. If they say this has to happen what are you going to do? Google it? Go to dental school?
Pulling healthy teeth is insane though.
Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones
#44It's a bit off topic but I often wonder why dentistry is not a specialization of medicine (like e.g. dermatology) but is its own separate thing, with separate insurance, etc. Dental health is part of being healthy. A lot of dental work is surgery. To me, it should be part of regular medical care.
To be clear I agree that as a matter of policy dentistry and optometry should be treated the same as everything else. There is no historical or policy-based excuse for untreated tooth decay in developed economies.
Dentistry is the earliest specialization of medicine and the first to be studied with modern scientific rigor - dental problems are universal in agricultural societies, and it's much easier to see what's going on without modern tech. So its separation from other branches of medicine is a natural historical accident. (Likewise with early optometrists being "applied opticians" vs early ophthalmologists guessing about the biology of the eye.)
The fact that minor dental treatments are physically invasive compared to other branches of medicine means that dental training will always be different from other physicians, and this naturally extends to professional organizations. But it shouldn't extend to insurance companies.
Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones
#45The dental 'Rewrite it in Rust' gambit?
Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones
#46This might sound stupid but I refuse to go to dentists that have "too nice" of an office. Over the years I have lived in several places and had a variety of dentists and one common theme that sticks with me, the nicer and higher tech the office is, the more procedures they are going to recommend you. They need to pay for the equipment and office somehow. I've had one dentist say I need 3 cavities filled. That I neede…
It doesn't cost that much to have a nice office. A better way of judging is how much stuff your dentist places on 'watch' rather than recommending expensive treatments.
As we get older our teeth become less perfect and there will always be some work that needs to be done. Most of it isn't urgent, has no effect on your health and can take years to deteriorate to a state where it does. If your dentist isn't telling you this then look elsewhere, regardless of how the office looks.
Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones
#47I went to a new dentist when I was 18 because my other dentist was unavailable. He declares that I have two cavities and fills one, but doesn't use enough anesthetic. Given my bad exp with him I went back to my other dentist who's flabbergasted that there was supposedly a cavity on the other tooth. No sign of any decay. These kind of experiences are why I try to vet a new dentist very hard before trusting them, even…
Exactly the same happened to me when I was in my teens and next thing I know my dentist has drilled pretty much most of the good teeth under the name of cavity. In my 40s now and I am still paying for it as I now have to keep on visiting a dentist every year because of my constantly broken fillings. I have paid a lot out of pocket and the insurance has paid a lot on my behalf to the dentists.
The cost of each filling nets the dentist $100+ and each patient now becomes a repeat customer and serves the dental industry for life. There is no ethics in this space and it's unfortunately a BIG SCAM.
Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones
#48It's a bit off topic but I often wonder why dentistry is not a specialization of medicine (like e.g. dermatology) but is its own separate thing, with separate insurance, etc. Dental health is part of being healthy. A lot of dental work is surgery. To me, it should be part of regular medical care.
Dentistry is a specialization, and Dentists are doctors. Not "doctors" in the chiropractic sense, but actual doctors with residency requirements.
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Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones
#49If you ask three different dentists, you'll often get three different recommendations. I had a really bad experience once so the next time I was told I needed something I did exactly this and it was pretty discouraging - they all wanted to do work but there was no consistently in what. I'm pretty sure most are hacks at this point and if you aren't actually in pain, I'd be wary of any work.
> I'm pretty sure most are hacks at this point and if you aren't actually in pain, I'd be wary of any work.
Even if you are in pain, as long as it's not severe/sharp, give it a couple days to see if it goes away permanently. A lot of "tooth" pain is just a bruised nerve from chewing something wrong, clenching, or other temporary things that do not warrant drilling into your teeth over.
Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones
#50This might sound stupid but I refuse to go to dentists that have "too nice" of an office. Over the years I have lived in several places and had a variety of dentists and one common theme that sticks with me, the nicer and higher tech the office is, the more procedures they are going to recommend you. They need to pay for the equipment and office somehow. I've had one dentist say I need 3 cavities filled. That I neede…
When I started working at Amazon in 2014 I had a number of coworkers from India and Taiwan whose dentists had convinced them that they needed professional teeth cleanings every 3 months.
I didn’t say anything as I am not a dental expert, but it felt like my coworkers were being taken advantage of. Like you I had an experience as a child with a dentist who my parents later found out was full of B.S.