That's anti-capitalist hogwash. Any time a price is higher than someone thinks it should be (based on nothing, really), then it's called "gouging".
Are you "gouging" your employer when you get a raise? After all, you're costing your employer more than he'd like to pay you.
If a dentist's prices are higher than they "should be", then another dentist could undercut him and get more patients. Or, you could pay to go to dental school for a few years and become one yourself, getting in on all the free money pouring in.
What your saying might be true - except that the American Dental Association and most of its state and country constituent dental societies lobby vigorously against any group that is capable of infringing on their lucrative monopoly.
Case in point: Dentists won’t work or live in rural Alaska. As a result, Alaska allowed Dental Health Aide Therapists to do simple dentistry. They were trained in New Zealand. The ADA and the Alaska Dental Society spent $1 million trying to stop them. Thank goodness they lost and now DHATs are allowed to work only in Alaska.
There are many dentist shortage areas in the US where people would welcome Dental Therapists. But organized dentistry is using it’s political might and money to keep them from helping out people who need dental work and at lower prices.
Dental Therapists have worked for decades in other developed countries as successfully and efficiently as dentists.
Besides who among us doesn’t have a dentist-horror story