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Comment by galadran | Hacker News Reader

More appropriate comparison would be to the UK where the cost of a private dental X-ray is between £9-£14 ($14-$22) [1], although realistically you would want a consultation as well. Most Brits use the NHS (state socialised) which provides a checkup and treatment for ~£20 for simple cases including x-rays [2]. Note that [2] is costs for an entire treatment which might be multiple visits and laboratory work.

[1] http://www.whatclinic.com/dentists/uk/x-ray [2] http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/Healthcosts/Pages/Dentalcosts.a...

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The prices are also on the same order of magnitude here in Japan, which is another country typically seen as high-cost. (the number a quick Google turned up was $35 for a panorama x-ray, before insurance)

The government health-insurance scheme also covers 70% of the costs of covered dental work and within this system the costs that dentists can charge are regulated (which in some cases leads to perverse incentives where dentists split up procedures like cleanings so they can bill the insurance for two procedures instead of one)

Note to non-Brits: NHS dentistry (and opticians) are a little different from the rest of the NHS, in that not everything is free and the NHS services are oversubscribed, so people tend to go private.

I think it's similar prices in France, xray+consultation is in the order of 60 EUR.

The nhs seems fairly impressive & well regarded internationally.

That said, anyone have some data on the quality of dental work done in UK system vs that of other countries?

Anecdotally i know a couple of people who lived in UK and moved to Australia have been pretty excited* about being able to access higher quality dental care to repair / mitigate earlier work done in the UK.

* well, as excited as one can reasonably get about expensive, painful, time consuming dental work...

The dentist doing surgery under the NHS will be the same one doing a private appointment afterwards. The only difference is the price you pay after, not the quality of the work. Each dentist typically has a limited number of NHS patients on their books so it can be pretty hard to find one available NHS spaces but private dental is not expensive.

I use a private (non-NHS) dentist in the UK, my last x-ray was wrapped up in my standard check-up price of ~£50, the cost is clearly so low they can just not bother billing for it separately.

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