It's worth it if the government guarantees it. Dental insurance might not be a good business to be in, but nevertheless people need it. It's a market failure, and it needs government intervention.
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.
ADDED: And one actually gets into cost discussions about things like crowns and alternative treatments with dentists. It actually seems like a good model of how healthcare spending should work. Yeah, I have insurance that pays some but thats orthogonal to the cost discussion I have with my dentist.
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.
That isn't the problem, it's the reason why giving them cash is better. Because if they can't afford to put gas in their car to get to work, using that money will keep them from borrowing it from the credit card company. And then in six months they'll still have $500 less credit card debt plus having not paid 25% APR for six months.
The only way it doesn't pay for dental care is if they don't buy dental care at all because they need something else more. But if they're correct to do that because the other things really are more important, what kind of idiots are we to think we should be finding a way to redirect the money back to dental care?
The only real solution then is to get them enough money that they can pay for the dental care and the more important things.
What are you proposing, price controls? Then what do you do when your dentist quits to become a real estate broker?
If I was proposing anything, it'd be to make it easier to become a dentist.
Many more people would like to become dentists than are accepted into dental schools.
http://www.adea.org/publications/Pages/2009-Applicants-and-E...
Of course having standards is good for patient outcomes. That said, I bet lots and lots (and lots and lots) of the rejected applicants would be fine dentists.
Would you bet your root canal on it?
The fact that there are more people who would like to do something than there are people who are capable of meeting the performance qualifications for it isn't an inherent problem. Only 0.6% of Navy recruits end up becoming SEALs despite 50% of recruits expressing interest. I'm sure there are many, many Navy sailors who would be fine SEALs, but that's neither here nor there.
Unless you're referencing specific evidence that the qualifications are systematically too strict[0], then it doesn't mean much to say that there are rejected applicants who would be fine dentists. And to be blunt, I think it'd be easier to make the case that they're not strict enough.
[0] The working hours and revenue of dentistry practices are not evidence of this
It's not really the case that we learn anything about the capabilities of applicants from the rejection, the number of people admitted to dental schools isn't adjusted to account for particularly good or particularly bad applicant classes.
Based on the bill breakdown I get from my dentist, it appears negotiated rates are a thing here too. I regularly see a total price, an insurance discount, and paid-by-insurance amount. The 'discount' ranges from 10-50% depending on the service.