I didn’t say anything as I am not a dental expert, but it felt like my coworkers were being taken advantage of. Like you I had an experience as a child with a dentist who my parents later found out was full of B.S.
Since moving back to MN, where lack of insurance is less common, we do not have this problem.
The only remaining scam is xrays.
But I also have felt like I was being taken advantage of by dentists who had bills to pay. I also am pretty sure one caused pain on purpose because I had missed an appointment and rescheduled. With 15 years more life experience, if that were to happen again I would just leave.
> Taiwan whose dentists had convinced them that they needed professional teeth cleanings every 3 months
Same, especially if I could get just a cleaning and not deal with the exam. I've often thought it'd be nice to be able to just pop in and get them professionally cleaned without the whole dental appointment around the cleaning.
At 3x a year it gets weird. Insurance companies are starting to at least 6 months between exams, rather than covering two per year.
Medical insurance has always been like that, which is annoying when you have kids that need them for school and activities because they sometimes want them to be dated within a certain timeframe. Everytime you are off a week or two, it pushes the appointment further and further from the 6 months, by the time your kid is in their teens, the 6 months have lapped each other.
Many doctors, not just dentists, will do this. Usually about 1/3-1/2 the rate.
If I could pop in for 20 minutes for a professional cleaning and it was under $50 I might do that 4x/yr.
Within 4-8 days of cleaning, plaque bacteria will be back at their healthy population levels.
You really need to attack them on a 12 hour timeline to keep populations in check.
It takes time for tartar to build up, atm my dentist recommends I go at minimum once a year, preferably twice (so I'm going twice).
I have a friend from China whose dentist convinced him to do that. On the other hand, he'd never been to a dentist in his life until he came to the US, and there was something about deep gum pockets.