My mother looked at me mad, knowing the financial burden I was causing them, and through her red face, gritted teeth, said to get them done.
I have never had a cavity, then, or ever. Those same fillings are still in place.
If the man was still alive, I would entertain giving him a similar set of issues, in return.
It was outright fraud.
I’ll bet you money that most of this dental quackery occurs in predominantly blue cities.
We don’t have this issue in small town Texas — and I’d put the quality of our dentists up against anyone’s.
My dental plan at work covers a couple of cleanings a year. I pay for a third cleaning out of pocket - it isn’t that expensive and there’s evidence that gum disease and inflammation can trigger heart disease. Cheaper than paying for a stent or a bypass later.
Don’t get me started on Mouth Mechanics. My wife had to see 1 dentist and 2 oral surgeons to finally determine she needed an implant. All the dentist could do was drill and fill. The first oral surgeon said he did root canals but not extractions. The second could do the extraction and implant base, but the dentist had to set the implant. Each dentist/oral surgeon needed new x-rays. Apparently, they could not share pics. Scammers! My dad always said that dentistry could be completed with a 1 year correspondence course.
>> It was outright fraud.
Definitely
Who can afford it anymore?
That’s pretty much the case with me. In 1968-69 as I was getting ready to be shipped out overseas, this new dentist from the Ga Dental School....a butter bar said, “you’re going to Viet Nam and won’t have any dental care out there so I’m gonna fill in all the deep fissures in your teeth. He drilled and poked stuffed and pushed that amalgam on my whole set of upper teeth. ALL damned day long. He said to make an appointment the next week for the bottom set. I never went back.
Since then, EVERY filling fell out and nearly all the big teeth cracked down to the root and had to be pulled. The bottom teeth are still good. I dearly wish I could get my hands on that ass.
Real piece of work, your mother.
Regards,
To me another interesting thing is that an emergency room refuses to have anything to do with dental. I know a man who was living very close to the line, and had no dentist. He had very quickly developed a raging very painful tooth infection and went to an ER. They turned him away without even starting an antibiotic.
A tooth infection is lethal and they let him walk out the door without the slightest effort.
They will crack open your chest and do emergency surgery for a bullet or heart attack. They will amputate a leg if they must. They will call in a neurologist for emergency brain surgery.
But pulling a tooth or trying to stop an infection somehow eludes them. I’m not talking crowns, fillings etc. But it’s odd they will do their best and call in specialists for every part of the body.... except for teeth.
I don’t know about other States, but in Oklahoma, Medicaid will pay virtually nothing on adult teeth, but will pay for crowns on children’s teeth, so that many dentists are actually putting crowns on baby teeth! To me, this is a huge scam and malpractice, and if I had children on Medicaid, I would not allow this practice! I don’t know if my dentist takes Medicaid, but he is a very upright man, and I am sure he does not crown baby teeth.
Chronic inflammation of the gums can lead to heart disease. Everyone needs to visit a dentist at least once a year. Just make sure it’s a good dentist.
I would have been interested in the author addressing this latest push towards caps and crowns.
I keep being told I have a couple cracked morals that need caps or crowns as over a grand a piece because *IF* one of them should crack even more, it could be a costly, time consuming, painful procedure to endure.
I was told that fillings don’t work so well and the teeth cannot be bonded with something that could hold them together.
If I were much younger, I’d maybe consider it. But at almost 70? Nah, not worth it for the few years I have left.
We had a dentist here who, if he had his way, would have you back every six months for a cleaning and something to the tune of $500 to $1,000 each time. Pretty good regular income if he could get you to come back.
My attorney once told me the highest earning professional clients he had were dentists, not doctors.
Dentists are nearly like Chiropractors if they can keep you coming back. Dentists actually do more when necessary.
I’m sorry you had to go thru such pain at such a young age. I still have the best memories of biting my dentist when I was young.
Gotta keep that cash flow going! At least the dentist did not try to sell your mom on gold crowns.
Also, though this is probably more in the orthodontic realm than dentistry, they had palatal expanders, prior to braces - as opposed to the old school approach of extracting perfectly good teeth (to make room for re-alignment).
Being married to a dental hygienist helped ;)
I have been told several times I needed root canals, 3 of the times I said just fill the tooth. Never had a problem with any of them.
And they rig local markets. In our little town you cannot even get dentures at all. All the ten or so dentists will do are expensive implants period, they got together and rigged the local market. And I mean expensive, as much or more than a new car costs.
Optometrists do the same thing. They sell glasses to kids who are too young to even tell you if something looks blurry or not. There is no such thing as “Your sight is fine, you don’t need glasses yet”. They will harm your kids vision before they lose a sale.
Doctors are the same way, they will do unneeded procedures and unethical practices just to make a buck. The whole health industry is a greedy scam.