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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

#201

Post by EasyMark »

brightball wrote: post #196
hansonkd wrote: post #31

This 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…

My dad is a dentist and he recommended a guy in a city near me. My wife and I both went there for a few years and never had any issues. The office was sold to a new, younger dentist...oddly enough a guy I knew from college years before. From that point forward, we both had regular cavities that needed to be filled. Eventually, we found another place and had a similar experience to yours: everything was fine. I always…

Left a dentist over this "you need root planing!" whaaaaatt?? I brush my teeth 2 times a day with an electric tooth brush and they are squeaky clean. I said to schedule me for it "we can get you in today!" me: "i gotta see a man about a dog" . I go to a new dentist and say nothing, he takes me in, does the xray, etc for new patient. Says my teeth and gums look great, no cavities. Guess who I cancelled on the next day and guess who I saw in 6 months for my next dental appointment.

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

#202

Post by outworlder »

hansonkd wrote: post #31

This 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…

"Nice" offices are a variable, but have a rate of false positives that are too high for me. That applies both to the US and Brazil (in fact, the dentist offices in Brazil seem to place even more effort in looking nice).

My current dentist office (in the US) did show me exactly where in the x-rays they were seeing a cavity(it was a pretty large one, but hidden). It was pretty clear. I could feel the difference when the drill got to it.

How do I know they weren't trying to sell me unecessary procedures? Because he told me that the cavity was quite large, and that I _might_ need a root canal, but he was going to do his best to avoid that. Procedure done, he told me to watch it for the next two weeks, and gave me a list of symptoms to watch for. Should I experience them, it would be a pretty good indication that it reached the nerve, and a root canal would be advised. Felt nothing. Subsequent visits and they tell me it is all fine. I also had to to deep cleaning once, on the account of having deep gum pockets. That was also necessary and I was starting to have problems with breath. Those two things happened because I spent 4 years without going to the dentist, so no checkups until things got bad.

Oh, and I also had a spot that was demineralizing and could become a cavity. They decided to watch until my next appointment (and I redoubled my cleaning efforts since then). Next visit, they told me that it was fine.

I have moved since then and I have to drive 1h for appointments, each way. Doesn't matter, it's 2h versus a potentially lifetime of problems (and a hole in my pocket).

You have done the right thing when asking for a second opinion.

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

#203

Post by jt2190 »

yardie wrote: post #146
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?

This whole post is about dentists recommending unnecessary treatment. And that has been our experience. She never had all these issues when she was seeing her dentist in her own country. But a few years in the US and her teeth are practically falling apart. Is it possible her previous dentist with no financial incentive found nothing wrong with her, yet the new one who is trying to make next quarters profit has every…

Find out if dentists are trained and licensed the same way in your wife’s home country as they are in the U.S.

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

#204

Post by BenjiWiebe »

sroussey wrote: post #178
jvanderbot wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While in LA, we shopped around for dentists. Several of the smaller places took advantage of the fact we had good insurance and insisted they had found several cavities (11 in once case). Having never / rarely had cavities, we were skeptical and tried other places. Since moving back to MN, where lack of insurance is less common, we do not have this problem. The only remaining scam is xrays.

X-rays are the universal scam. Even the government recommends against them for the last decade at least.

My annual xray noticed I had a spacer (little rubber ring) embedded in my gums that the orthodontist missed.

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

#205

Post by kyleblarson »

hansonkd wrote: post #31

This 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…

I had the exact same experience. I live in a small mountain town with 500 people. I saw the local dentist in town for 10 years and he was great. Regular checkups, rays, cleanings etc. with one patch when I chipped a tooth. The office definitely seemed old school, nothing fancy. My dental health was fine. He retired and was unable to sell his practice so it closed. I googled around and found a dentist in a much larger town 2 hours away. Super nice office, all the latest technology. After the first appointment he said that I had something like 5 old fillings that needed to be repaired and a bunch of other stuff. I have good dental insurance but he was going to charge them something like 5k. It just felt scummy. I didn't go back and now go to another "country" dentist in the next town over and it's back to normal.

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

#206

Post by BenjiWiebe »

hansonkd wrote: post #84
BadHumans wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dentist has one of the most state of the art facilities I've ever seen. On my first visit they told me I needed 2 fillings and a cleaning and sent me on my way. > This has happened to me before when i went away to college my childhood dentist said I had cavities that I needed to fill. When i got to college and went to the dentist there, they couldn't find a problem. The college dentist could also just be wrong.

> The college dentist could also just be wrong Maybe, but then other dentists I saw after college would also be wrong too. I think you are hitting a core problem with dentists, is that it is hard to verify and get a second opinion. Since insurance only covers one xray a year, etc. it is more economical for people to just get a filling (maybe $50-$100 with insurance) compared with going out and paying out of pocket fo…

You can get the xray sent over. Or, like I did once, you can ask for your xray on a flash drive/cd right then and there after they do it.

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

#207

Post by lavezzi »

sdo72 wrote: post #186

Dentists in the U.S. are often driven by profit rather than patient care, much like many other healthcare providers. Over the past 20 years, I’ve seen more than ten dentists, and only one genuinely seemed to care about my dental health, doing everything necessary to save a tooth. She may have cared because we’re distantly related. Here are a few examples from my experiences: 1. I went in for a routine cleaning, but t…

> Dentists in the U.S. are often driven by profit rather than patient care

Isn't this arguably the case for any healthcare treatment in the US? It's all profit motivated and you are essentially gouged at every step of the way.

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

#208

Post by axus »

hansonkd wrote: post #31

This 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…

Here's my data point. Dentist has a nice office, location is kind of pricy, the staff acts well-compensated. Cleanings twice per year, Xrays once per year, and every few years a cavity filled on average.

No extra procedures recommended, but everything listed above is above average pricing. My insurance pays a percentage instead of a flat rate.

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

#209

Post by aanet »

A serious question: Do Dentists not have to swear by the Hippocratic Oath??

Not that swearing by the Oath implies that all dentists, by association, will indeed be honest... Or the opposite, tbh.

Just curious.

I always found it (still find it) rather curious that the United States, despite being such an advanced nation / economy with pockets of excellence in medicine care, still has such crumbling, disparate and highly unequal medical care.

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

#210

Post by azinman2 »

daft_pink wrote: post #20
azinman2 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem is the cost of education. People have loans to repay, and then don’t take time to apprentice like they used to. In dentistry this leads to a lot of unnecessary work. In medicine this leads to very short appointments, and fewer doctors.

My education was expensive and our industry hasn’t turned into that.

Did you have to pay for grad school on top of undergrad?
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