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A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones

arstechnica.com

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Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones

#151

Post by toast0 »

Suppafly wrote: post #137
z0r wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd get a professional teeth cleaning every 3 months if my insurance covered it

>I'd get a professional teeth cleaning every 3 months if my insurance covered Same, especially if I could get just a cleaning and not deal with the exam. I've often thought it'd be nice to be able to just pop in and get them professionally cleaned without the whole dental appointment around the cleaning.

Ask your dentist about it. This is something they can do. Typical insurance covers an exam and cleaning 2x a year, so you'd pay for the other 2 cleanings (maybe with a discount), but they can absolutely do a cleaning with no exam, or usually just an unbilled quick look if the dentist has a minute. While cleaning your teeth, obvious problems will be obvious, and non-obvious problems can wait until the next exam.

At 3x a year it gets weird. Insurance companies are starting to at least 6 months between exams, rather than covering two per year.

Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones

#152

Post by Suppafly »

jollyllama wrote: post #114
woobar wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are saying that multiple dentists found issues with your wife's teeth, she routinely refuses treatment, and this is somehow a scam?

She's going in for cleanings. If she's not experiencing problems, what does that tell you about the prognoses she's receiving?

>If she's not experiencing problems

Subjectively not experiencing problems isn't really in indication of good health though.

Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones

#153

Post by bigstrat2003 »

lolinder wrote: post #78

Dentists function similarly to mechanics for most people: they're the expert who knows everything and you know basically nothing. They tell you something is wrong and they need to do a $X00 procedure to fix it, but you have no way to validate in the moment that this is true. The funny thing is that with mechanics I think this has long been widely understood. People realize how important it is to find a trustworthy me…

This has been known about dentists for a long time too. I remember reading articles back when I was a kid (in the 90s) talking about how to tell if a dentist is ripping you off, getting second opinions, etc.

Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones

#154

Post by schaefer »

loocsinus wrote: post #97

I am a dentist. The article and some of the comments here make me sad. sorry for the bad apples in my profession. I am sure most of the dentists are honest. If you have questions about procedures you don't understand, you can ask me.

I'm with you. The dog pile of negative comments here has me thinking just one thing. Time to log off for the day.

Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones

#155

Post by hbosch »

cj wrote: post #18

This reminds me of when I went to a dentist in SF who told me I needed to have my wisdom teeth out. I did the initial exam, and then hesitated when it came to booking the procedure. The dentist noticed my hesitation, and said something along the lines of "And after the surgery, don't forget we'll also prescribe really great pain medication!" 10 years later my new dentist says the wisdom teeth are fine and to leave th…

I had a dentist in Seattle that urged me to get some fillings done. They wanted to do at least 3. COVID happened and I didn't feel comfortable going into the dentist's office, but they called me every three months for those entire 2 years urging me to come back in. Weird thing was my teeth felt great that whole time... I wondered with each slightly more urgent phone call that they worried I would end up deciding I didn't need the fillings!

Eventually I moved and switched dentists. On my first exam, he suggested one filling but said if it wasn't bothering me then I don't have to schedule it. Strange indeed.

Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones

#156

Post by Suppafly »

ilc wrote: post #81
cj wrote: post #18

This reminds me of when I went to a dentist in SF who told me I needed to have my wisdom teeth out. I did the initial exam, and then hesitated when it came to booking the procedure. The dentist noticed my hesitation, and said something along the lines of "And after the surgery, don't forget we'll also prescribe really great pain medication!" 10 years later my new dentist says the wisdom teeth are fine and to leave th…

Odd, my dentist's hygenist complains that people who have their wisdom teeth suck at taking care of them in general. Mine got pulled for good reason. They were severely impacted, and pushing other teeth out of alignment. (I can still feel that I have out of alignment teeth in the far back of my mouth.) Not everyone should "keep their wisdom teeth." Sometimes... they gotta go.

>Odd, my dentist's hygenist complains that people who have their wisdom teeth suck at taking care of them in general.

Mine complains about having to clean them since they have to reach way in there to get at them, but it always pleasantly surprised how well I keep them clean.

Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones

#157

Post by koala_man »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #2

I 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…

> doesn't use enough anesthetic

My school dentist always botched the anesthesia, and afterwards I had to grind my teeth for three days to make them fit together again.

I never told anyone because adults kept saying dentistry hurts so I assumed it was normal. I didn't realize how fucked up this was until I went to college and experienced a competent dentist for the first time.

Re: A new dental scam is to pull healthy teeth to sell you expensive fake ones

#159

Post by alwa »

I’m reminded of Ferris Jabr’s well-reported 2019 piece for the Atlantic, exploring the shaky scientific basis of much of what we know as dentistry. It seems a lot harder to hold dentists (and their investors) to a uniform standard when the field is so much more art than science.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/05/the-tro...

(And previous HN discussion in 2022; 366 points, 342 comments; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31790226 )

> ”The Truth About Dentistry”: It’s much less scientific—and more prone to gratuitous procedures—than you may think.

> The uneasy relationship between dentist and patient is further complicated by an unfortunate reality: Common dental procedures are not always as safe, effective, or durable as we are meant to believe. As a profession, dentistry has not yet applied the same level of self-scrutiny as medicine, or embraced as sweeping an emphasis on scientific evidence. “We are isolated from the larger health-care system. So when evidence-based policies are being made, dentistry is often left out of the equation,” says Jane Gillette, a dentist in Bozeman, Montana, who works closely with the American Dental Association’s Center for Evidence-Based Dentistry, which was established in 2007.

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