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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

#211

Post by gruez »

_1tem wrote: post #200
gruez wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The point of PE isn't to run sustainable businesses that provide quality products and services for customers while treating their employees well. The point is to rapidly suck all the value out of businesses by loading them up with debt, breaking laws, mistreating customers, and exploiting employees. What happens to the carcass of the business or to the customers and employees whose lives have been destroyed doesn't…

No. That is not how language works. "Money laundering" does not mean putting paper bills into a washing machine. "Private equity" firms are a specific business structure besides the literal meaning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_equity

"Private equity (PE) is stock in a private company that does not offer stock to the general public. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_laundering

"Money laundering is the process of illegally concealing the origin of money obtained from illicit activities such as [...]"

Seems like I'm using the terms properly, and you're trying to inject extra connotations. What you're doing with '"Private equity" firms are a specific business structure besides the literal meaning' is basically the same as loudly proclaiming "all cyclists are assholes" and then walking it back with 'No. That is not how language works. "cyclists" does not mean people riding bikes. When I use "cyclists" I don't actually mean all cyclists, only the bad ones.'

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

#212

Post by azinman2 »

nextworddev wrote: post #15
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.

We should not blame “cost of education” to justify fraud especially for healthcare related things. There’s a line, don’t cross it

This is literally from talking to (good) dentists about the state of the industry and intrinsic motivations. I’m hardly justifying fraud - but that doesn’t tell you the “why” when it’s widespread.

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

#213

Post by sroussey »

alistairSH wrote: post #193
sroussey wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I haven’t heard this… what’s the scam? They don’t show anything they isn’t visible with the eye?

No, that they do X-rays every year.

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

#214

Post by tcbawo »

alwa wrote: post #148
highcountess wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why the consequences of dishonesty in such asymmetric dynamics need to be not just major, but stunningly, shockingly severe; e.g., seizure of all assets, including homes and anything that would otherwise be protected to totally impoverish them and bar them from any professional position for life. These types of relationships are the bullseye for deterrence through sever punishment; they are deliberative offen…

Isn’t this type of dishonesty especially ambiguous and difficult to prove? There are extreme cases, but also a broad range of opinion in which professionals routinely disagree. The higher the stakes, the more ambiguous the problem: I’m reminded of lawyering. How do we know if a defense lawyer is “bad” or “dishonest”? If we look at their conviction ratio, then we might just be punishing the ones who tend to work the m…

This is the type of thing that a public review/reputation system tends to flesh out. But, we have seen this fail over and over as the system gets gamed or abused. Any industry where consumers buy less frequently than once every few months, these systems are awful. Different people have different situations and it might take a long time before someone even realizes they’ve been ripped off.

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

#215

Post by cybwraith »

Ugh. Yeah going to a dentist is very similar to the average person going to a car mechanic. You just have no good way to self-verify what they are telling you is true. Its one of the ultimate "normal" professions where people with no moral compass can majorly abuse their customers/patients to make a ton of money

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

#216

Post by omoikane »

pests wrote: post #126
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…

There is an article that's a few years old of a guy going to ~60 different dentists to see what variety of services he's offered. I remember he went to his original dentist to get a baseline and it was just a cavity. He was suggested all the way up to full denture replacement, IIRC. I do remember him making a connection to the office nicenwss.

Was it this one?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37022911 - I went to 50 different dentists: almost all gave a different diagnosis (1997)

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

#217

Post by elif »

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 if they have a cash rate for extra cleanings past insurance.

Many doctors, not just dentists, will do this. Usually about 1/3-1/2 the rate.

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

#218

Post by cybwraith »

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…

6. Orthodontists often put braces on young children, as early as age 6-8, even though in many other countries (like Korea), the average age is around 18. I’ve read stories of people who regret early braces, particularly when the wrong teeth were extracted.

This happened to me and caused me all sorts of jaw problems later in adulthood.

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

#219

Post by bikenaga »

A study of private equity and dental practices: "Percentage Of Dentists And Dental Practices Affiliated With Private Equity Nearly Doubled, 2015-21" - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39102603/

The abstract: "Over the course of the past twenty years, private equity (PE) has played a role in acquiring medical practices, hospitals, and nursing homes. More recently, PE has taken a greater interest in acquiring dental practices, but few data exist about the scope of PE activity within dentistry. We analyzed dentist provider data for the period 2015-21 to examine trends in PE acquisition of dental practices. The percentage of dentists affiliated with PE increased from 6.6 percent in 2015 to 12.8 percent in 2021. During this period, PE affiliation increased particularly among larger dental practices and among dental specialists such as endodontists, oral surgeons, and pediatric dentists. PE-affiliated dental practices were more likely to participate in Medicaid than practices not affiliated with PE. Future research should investigate whether PE's role in dentistry affects the affordability and quality of dental services."

The original article is paywalled - only the abstract is available - so here's an article which summarizes it: https://adanews.ada.org/ada-news/2024/august/private-equity-...

And sort of related to get an idea of the money involved: "Selling up for millions: Equity arbitrage increasing wealth of US dentists, but not for long" - https://www.dental-tribune.com/news/selling-up-for-millions-...

Is it generally true that a dental practice that is a franchise is private-equity backed? The original article mentions Aspen Dental. If I wanted to know about (say) SmileBuilderz, how could I find out?

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

#220

Post by elif »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #136
sameoldtune wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, how much did it cost, and how much time did it take? If I could pop in for 20 minutes for a professional cleaning and it was under $50 I might do that 4x/yr.

4x cleanings and 2x cleanings are really not much different.

Within 4-8 days of cleaning, plaque bacteria will be back at their healthy population levels.

You really need to attack them on a 12 hour timeline to keep populations in check.

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