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Why Dentistry Is Separate from Medicine

theatlantic.com

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Re: Why Dentistry Is Separate from Medicine

#91

Post by ghaff »

madengr wrote: post #89
PeterisP wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a type of expense that's (a) unpredictable, and (b) rare, then it's a good fit for insurance. Car crashes are unpredictable and rare, so it makes sense to insure them. Regular car maintenance is predictable and tends to happen in (almost?) every insurance period, so it's not - some payment plan or bundling may be an option, but insurance makes no sense, it would only be more expensive than paying directly…

I work for Honeywell. They just dropped paying their share for dental insurance. It's now 100% employee paid, thus I dropped the insurance and just pay out of my HSA. The insurance makes no sense financially, short of having multiple teeth knocked out.

I looked up mine. It's possibly a positive value for me if I were paying the whole amount. But, then, I probably have more dental care that the typical twenty something so I'm probably benefiting from the pool.

Re: Why Dentistry Is Separate from Medicine

#92

Post by AnthonyMouse »

mtdewcmu wrote: post #88
ghaff wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why you think dental EDIT: care is a market failure. There are dentists people can go to and get care. Pricing is mostly not affected by if you have insurance or not. (Most dentists will just charge you if their rates exceed what insurance pays.) If you're arguing that "someone" ought to pay for dental care that's a different matter that doesn't really have anything to do with insurance per se. ADD…

It's a market failure if people are suffering due to being unable to afford proper care. It's possible that the blame lies elsewhere than the insurers themselves. Maybe dentists charge too much. But the market isn't providing what people need. The ideal solution would be single-payer, but expanding Obamacare and Medicaid to cover adequate dental services would be a big leap forward.

The true problem you're identifying is poverty. Dental care isn't outrageously expensive. It doesn't have huge margins or vast inefficiency. The reason people can't afford it is because they're poor.

No bureaucratic solution involving government-subsidized dental services is going to produce a better outcome than taking the same money and giving it to those people in cash.

Re: Why Dentistry Is Separate from Medicine

#93

Post by madengr »

ghaff wrote: post #91
madengr wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for Honeywell. They just dropped paying their share for dental insurance. It's now 100% employee paid, thus I dropped the insurance and just pay out of my HSA. The insurance makes no sense financially, short of having multiple teeth knocked out.

I looked up mine. It's possibly a positive value for me if I were paying the whole amount. But, then, I probably have more dental care that the typical twenty something so I'm probably benefiting from the pool.

The only one that was worth it was a policy from Delta Dental. We went to sign up for it, and you were required to have a health plan through the ACA.

I have a wife and two kids. Three cleanings, a surface filling, and a sealant, was $800. This is our experiment going without dental insurance. We'll see how it goes this year.

Though I'm putting $600/month into the HSA since our health insurance through Honeywell sucks, and they have dropped dental. I'm waiting for them to drop health insurance.

Re: Why Dentistry Is Separate from Medicine

#94

Post by err4nt »

wslh wrote: post #33
feld wrote: post #21

Dental/oral health is crucial. You can die from dental problems. I will never understand why the entire dental industry is treated as if it is cosmetic or non-essential. Stress to your immune system and failure of major organs is not taken seriously, but it is a very real risk.

You can also detect certain kind of cancers via oral inspection.

And I've heard organ diseases and organ health can sometimes be immediately evident to experienced dental workers that doctors inspecting other areas of the body might not see as well!

Re: Why Dentistry Is Separate from Medicine

#95

Post by barking »

kilon wrote: post #66
barking wrote: post #20

Dentists in the UK receive a bachelor degree, as do doctors. However it was a sanctionable offence in the eyes of the General Dental Council for a dentist to title themselves Dr. This was purely a Dental Council regulation, anyone at the time could call themselves doctor, it wasn't a criminal offence. With the arrival of dentists from EU countries who were allowed to do so, UK dentists felt they were being put at a d…

In Greek the equivalent to "dentist" is "odontiatros" which translates exactly as "tooth doctor". So for me a dentist not regarded as doctor sounds extremely weird.

same goes for German.

Re: Why Dentistry Is Separate from Medicine

#96

Post by maxerickson »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #92
mtdewcmu wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a market failure if people are suffering due to being unable to afford proper care. It's possible that the blame lies elsewhere than the insurers themselves. Maybe dentists charge too much. But the market isn't providing what people need. The ideal solution would be single-payer, but expanding Obamacare and Medicaid to cover adequate dental services would be a big leap forward.

The true problem you're identifying is poverty. Dental care isn't outrageously expensive. It doesn't have huge margins or vast inefficiency. The reason people can't afford it is because they're poor . No bureaucratic solution involving government-subsidized dental services is going to produce a better outcome than taking the same money and giving it to those people in cash.

The margins are healthy enough that many dentists work 4 days a week while earning a fantastic living.

Re: Why Dentistry Is Separate from Medicine

#97

Post by barking »

chimeracoder wrote: post #70
badminton1 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US they have the title of DDS (doctor of dental surgery).

Though in the US, they receive a postgraduate degree (as do medical doctors), not just a bachelor's. Technically they could receive that degree without a bachelor's degree, but I've never heard of anyone getting into medical or dental school without having received an undergraduate degree.

Typically, here, people start studying medicine or dentistry straight out of secondary school at 17 or 18 years of age. Medics qualify 5 or 6 years later with an MB (Medical bachelor), dentistry (Bachelor of Dental Surgery) typically takes one year less though the summer breaks for dental students can be as short as just one month. They can be back doing practical clinical dentistry in early August while the medical students are off until the start of October.

Re: Why Dentistry Is Separate from Medicine

#98

Post by barking »

masklinn wrote: post #32
barking wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ophthalmologists are specialists just like any other medical specialist, e.g. a dermatologist. Does the fact that general practitioners refer people on to dermatologists mean that family doctors are not 'real doctors'? Sorry if that sounds aggressive, I am unfairly taking the inference from what you said that opticians are somehow 'fake'.

> I am unfairly taking the inference from what you said that opticians are somehow 'fake'. Opticians are equivalent to pharma techs (or dental hygienists as dogma1138 noted), could you be thinking about optometrists (sometimes called Ophthalmic Opticians in the UK)?

Probably, I wouldnt know which is which. I have been very impressed any time I've had my eyes checked.

Re: Why Dentistry Is Separate from Medicine

#99

Post by ghaff »

madengr wrote: post #93
ghaff wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked up mine. It's possibly a positive value for me if I were paying the whole amount. But, then, I probably have more dental care that the typical twenty something so I'm probably benefiting from the pool.

The only one that was worth it was a policy from Delta Dental. We went to sign up for it, and you were required to have a health plan through the ACA. I have a wife and two kids. Three cleanings, a surface filling, and a sealant, was $800. This is our experiment going without dental insurance. We'll see how it goes this year. Though I'm putting $600/month into the HSA since our health insurance through Honeywell suck…

It's definitely marginal in most cases if your employer isn't paying in. It's not even like the annual max for most policies is all that high. It probably works out if you're getting semi-regular crowns or other work in that general vein on a semi-regular basis but it's hard to make the case in general.

Re: Why Dentistry Is Separate from Medicine

#100

Post by ghaff »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #92
mtdewcmu wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a market failure if people are suffering due to being unable to afford proper care. It's possible that the blame lies elsewhere than the insurers themselves. Maybe dentists charge too much. But the market isn't providing what people need. The ideal solution would be single-payer, but expanding Obamacare and Medicaid to cover adequate dental services would be a big leap forward.

The true problem you're identifying is poverty. Dental care isn't outrageously expensive. It doesn't have huge margins or vast inefficiency. The reason people can't afford it is because they're poor . No bureaucratic solution involving government-subsidized dental services is going to produce a better outcome than taking the same money and giving it to those people in cash.

Yeah. Pretty much all the same arguments could be applied to automobile purchase and maintenance, something that many people require to get from where they live to where they work. It doesn't mean that we need to have a government program specifically to cover cars.
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