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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

#261

Post by fma »

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 was going to a dentist. They sold or got bought by PE. They renovated the office...fancy everything. Dentists change periodically (hence why I think it's PE, they hire college grads).

Total shift in how often I get xrays, how pushy they are with fluoride or night guard.

Billing errors also pop up...

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

#262

Post by randerson »

buffalobuffalo wrote: post #229
rootusrootus wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is some merit to that idea. It is not perfect, but it is a potential red flag. I experienced something similar a couple weeks ago when I went to a local dermatologist for a skin cancer screening. The office was gorgeous. Top of the line everything, spacious, just incredible. When the doctor came in, he was a whirlwind - he glanced at my back, the fronts of my arms, and my face ... then pronounced me in…

I guess that's objectively worse since it results in false negatives as opposed to false positives. But personally I think it stings a bit more to get tricked into procedures you don't actually need. It's genuinely hard to identify dishonest practitioners. I think the best solution might be to convince the insurance companies to pay for second opinions. And then only to pay for the procedure if the two diagnoses agre…

Or separate diagnosis from treatment. I'd like to go to one dentist who gets paid a flat fee to look at my mouth and identify problems, and then choose another dentist who can fix the problem. That way no dentist has the incentive to lie.

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

#263

Post by bityard »

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…

This is only going to get more common as dental offices become owned by private equity firms, unfortunately.

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

#264

Post by [deleted] »

Suppafly wrote: post #198
sk11001 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The logic is flimsy - having the newer equipment also means looking for reasons to use it to justify the cost so these dentists will often recommend expensive onlays instead of fillings for example.

Or your logic is flimsy. Equipment, as far as I can tell, is mostly bought once and then mortgaged over the lifetime of the practice, so they are presumably paying the same regardless. Newer dentists just have newer, and nicer, equipment. I go to a newer dentist and have never been recommended onlays. It's like any profession, some people are honest and some aren't.

[deleted]

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

#265

Post by bityard »

lavezzi wrote: post #207
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.

Some dentists/doctors/etc have integrity. They are becoming increasingly rare as private equity takes over family-owned practices.

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

#266

Post by Der_Einzige »

owenversteeg wrote: post #250
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 hate to say it, but I do not believe that most dentists are honest. Have you heard of the Readers Digest dentist investigation? In any other field it would have been a come-to-Jesus moment, prompting total reform, but the industry escaped with a mountain of PR and no change. That was nearly thirty years ago. Since then, median gross dentists' billings have increased significantly. Support for evidence-based, low-in…

This is the same country that thinks it’s okay to dock tails on corgis, to remove foreskin on babies who aren’t lucky enough to be born in a west coast blue state, and pushes “ferberization” on hundreds of millions of children to remind them that their parents don’t want to take care of them if they cry when it’s inconvenient. I’m not even bringing up the literal scams of chiropractors or “naturopathic” doctors.

We are a disgusting, cruel people. Finland or Sweden would lock up (in cushy prison camps) the white coats for a fraction of what they get away with here in the USA

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

#267

Post by mandmandam »

foobarian wrote: post #167
xyclos wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was 12, I was scheduled by my regular dentist to have two cavities filled. It was the first time I had anything negative in a dental checkup. We were very poor, so my dad was pissed that it was going to be almost $400 to get them filled. He found a different dentist that was supposed to be a bit cheaper, and I went to that one instead. He was shocked to hear that I had been scheduled for two fillings. Since I…

I wonder if there is room for a service that just performs X-rays and passes them through some kind of AI model as a kind of a "dental fizz-buzz." Surely they wouldn't have any perverse incentives in that case.

Oh man. I would dearly love to see scumbag dentists lose their ability to easily scam vulnerable people, often desperate and in pain.

That said - I'm sure they have tight regulations on who is allowed to X-ray teeth, and diverse ways to keep their own in line should they threaten the apple cart.

Ever heard of nano silver fluoride? ... Exactly. (Unless you saw the HN story on it here recently [0].)

0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41474080

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

#268

Post by nosianu »

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…

That reminds me of this 2020 study of dentists in Switzerland, previously discussed on HN in January 2023:

HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34322194

Study: "Health Services as Credence Goods: a Field Experiment" -- https://academic.oup.com/ej/article-abstract/130/629/1346/57... (full study available on SciHub)

[Note: Credence goods are goods whose qualities cannot be ascertained by consumers even after purchase, or where an expert knows more about the quality a consumer needs than the consumer himself.]

> We present the results from a field experiment in the market for dental care: a test patient who does not need treatment is sent to 180 dentists to receive treatment recommendations.

> In the experiment, we vary the socio-economic status of the patient and whether a second opinion signal is sent. Furthermore, measures of market, practice and dentist characteristics are collected.

> We observe an overtreatment recommendation rate of 28% and a striking heterogeneity in treatment recommendations.

> Furthermore, we find significantly fewer overtreatment recommendations for patients with higher socio-economic status compared with lower socio-economic status for standard visits, suggesting a complex role for patients’ socio-economic status.

> Competition intensity, measured by dentist density, does not have a significant influence on overtreatment. Dentists with shorter waiting times are more likely to propose unnecessary treatment.

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

#269

Post by mandmandam »

krisoft wrote: post #184
lupusreal wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I fear there's not really a good way to vet Dentists effectively since most people probably never find out that they've been scammed for years. I'd love to learn some new strategies though. It's something the government should be doing; running sting operations against dentists with compliants against them. Unfortunately, dentists and prosecutors are in the same social circles.

I like the idea of that proposal, but I'm not sure how it would work in practice. The problem is that the crooked dentist will argue that the "bait" patient has in fact have cavities. And then if the prosecutor finds somehow convincing evidence that the patient does not actually have cavities the crooked dentist can change tactic and say it was a honest mistake on their part. With other crimes where "sting operations…

It could be done. You do a first pass of a significant number of dentists, with people with confirmed healthy teeth, and then do a second pass on every dentist who recommends fillings. Caught scamming twice? License suspension. Repeat offender? Jail time. The odds of such a program putting an innocent dentist in jail gotta be near-nil.

There's no shortage of people who would damn-near volunteer for the work, given how many of us have had multiple run-ins with crooked dentists.

Even if it cost, say, $10k to catch each scumbag dentist, the ROI to society would be tremendous. Catch enough dentists in the space of a few months, apply appropriate consequences, and the whole culture will change.

That said, in reality the dentists would 'hire lobbyists' to kill anything like this.

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