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Comment by taeric | Hacker News Reader

Wisdom teeth removal is actually one of the things they default to, that it is less clear they should default. Though, I don't know how to square your thoughts here. Prime example of how private enterprises control costs? Or a lot of quackery and cosmetic only? These seem at odds.

I'm not sure what the distinction between private and for-profit is. Can you elaborate?

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Examples of necessary things. If the wisdom teeth are coming in straight, they can stay (although most dentists will remove them anyway), but they usually come in at an angle, and need to come out so that they don't cause problems. I agree with you that dentists overdo this one, but for many people it is actually necessary.

In the US, we have 3 kinds of schools:

* Public/state schools: The school is run by a state government. Some of these have good quality, but some are not good. All of them give a huge discount to students from the local state.

* Private for-profit: These usually all suck, and are scams. ITT tech, University of Phoenix, and others are in this boat. These make their money by providing an education for less money than they charge in tuition.

* Private non-profit: The school is organized and run as a non-profit institution, but is not connected to the government. Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and most other top colleges are private non-profits. Outside the US, I think Oxford and Cambridge are also like this. Private non-profit trade schools also exist, and they are usually the best ones. An example I can think of is the North Bennet Street School (again in Boston, MA). The high-end schools in this category tend to get more of their money from donations and endowments than from tuition.

Apologies if it sounded like I was saying they should never take out wisdom teeth. I was just alluding to what you ack, it is the default position that near any dentist practice will hold. I will fully cede that I don't see too much danger in this position. Hard to not feel it is a wasteful, though.

Ok, I thought you had something other than non-profit in mind there. My personal experience with private non-profit schools is less shining, to be honest. The vast majority of their success is typically from heavy selection on who they allow in.

Best example of the last is probably Berklee...also, of course....Boston

Most British universities don't map cleanly onto these categories. In theory most of them (including Oxford and Cambridge) are independent educational charities. But endowments are (by US standards) small, and they're so dependent on public funding that they tend to do governments' bidding. A little less so Oxford and Cambridge, which are richer and prouder, but it's mostly a difference in degree than in kind. There's also quite a bit of direct government regulation (e.g. by the Office for Students).

There are also a few actual private universities, some non-profit (e.g. Buckingham, a free-market experiment which has survived but not thrived) and some for-profit (e.g. BPP University). But all of our major institutions are semi-public. Ish.

Perhaps unique to my area but I don't know anyone who was "defaulted" to have their wisdom teeth out. I didn't until college because that's when I started having issues with multiple partial bony impactions. My fiance still has hers. Everyone I've talked to about it was told by their dentist "if it doesn't bother you we won't do anything, and once it does we will."

From what I've seen, folks that are long term with a dentist are likely to get decent advice to not do unnecessary work. New practices, especially chains, are heavily incentivized to do the work, though.

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