Flap's Blog – FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog

Obama should reform health care (including dentistry) immediately. Dentists always try to charge people too much. I don’t have insurance, but I’ve heard that even those with insurance are often required to pay more (often much more) than their insurance copay. Why are we letting them get away with this?! There should be laws against it. Their should also be laws which force them to guarantee their work for a certain amount of time (based on the procedure and materials used, of course). I’ve had to pay for the same filling 3 times in a 5 year period! Dentists are rip off artists. They don’t care that I live near the poverty level; they still try to do unnecessary root canals or whitening treatments on me. They try to get me to take out loans I can’t afford to pay off to have these procedures done. They also talk down to me and treat me like an idiot. One even told me I should do the unnecessary treatments she requested because “she’s a doctor” (she said it very arrogantly like having an advanced degree means that she should worshiped or something – what an inept lamo) and implied I was an idiot. Anyhow, they have no honor. They try to take advantage of you no matter what you try or how you act around them (i.e. if you’re friendly, they talk down to you and try to get you to approve unnecessary work and if you’re assertive, this offends their fragile little egos and they mess your teeth up on purpose – either way, they take advantage of you)! They make way too much money as well. Primary care physicians have a lot more post graduate training (i.e. 3 years vs. none required for dentists). Furthermore, most primary care doctors work about 60 hours a week while dentists usually work 35-40, yet dentists usually earn more! Doesn’t anybody else see a problem with this?! Personally, I think most medical professionals (not primary care doctors who are working 60+ hours/week and making $160K, though) should be forced to take a pay cut (this includes dentists, physician specialists – some of these make like 400K+/yr, and RN with 2 year degrees who make more than people with four year degrees or even master’s degrees in rigorous fields like engineering!) – this is one way to cut the costs of a national health care system to get it going sooner. I really don’t care if they don’t like it. People who abuse their power (like those mentioned above) should NOT be allowed to retain it. In fact, the government should require that these people work in government supervised clinics (i.e. no more solo practice), so they can be monitored to ensure abuse does not happen anymore. There’s no need to worry about people leaving these fields – if they do, thousands of qualified people are waiting to take their place both here and over seas (rejection rates to med. and dental schools are over 50% of WELL qualified applicants). These professions will still be high status even if paid lower. They are actually stimulating and interesting fields. Given these reasons, they will still attract many people even if they don’t pay as much (in fact, they will attract the types of people who SHOULD be in them i.e. smart caring people who aren’t going into it for the money.