I strongly suspect my dentist is making shit up, too. I had to refuse a couple of expensive treatments. The main goal seems to be to “use up” my dental insurance more than anything.
Recently he did some 3-month contract work for a very large dental chain, let’s call it Penass.
I’ve never seen him so depressed in my live. He said that Penass’s business model was all about running up insurance and selling loans for large operations. He was directly encouraged to do extra, not necessary work to run up the bill.
He came out of retirement after that and started another practice out of, what I can only guess, was frustration and guilt.
A lot of these large dental chains absolutely tack on extra work and do a shitty job to keep people coming back.
In the US, I highly recommend looking for independent “boutique” dentists. Even if they are out of your insurance network, a lot of them will give better rates if you pay in cash.
Not only do you actually get to see the same person on every visit, they're not as likely to do this sort of thing.
It was very surprising to find out, after growing up and my parents returning, that this was unusual.
The hospital has been under intense investigation by the local news.
https://www.wral.com/holly-hill-hospital/21507953/
This is the newest scam running, privatize health care so that these companies can rake in billions. I am sure this dental school probably gets millions for doing this.
I told this story to a friend years later and he said the same thing happened to him.
People similarly get unnecessary work done on their car to boost dealership profits.
Do you want to create a government agency to budget how much we can all spend on car repairs and then take it out of our taxes?
And why can't we have education AND universal healthcare? I want a government agnecy (the people) to control the morality of corporations and private equity. Like we have laws against fraud already that protects us from "unnecessary work done on their car to boost dealership profits".
Adding still, why would anyone be against universal healthcare? I mean it is the biggest insurance pool you can create and that immediately lowers costs.
I think they are working on it. My dentist has cameras shaped roughly like a toothbrush. Before and after performing work, they record images of the affected area. He says insurance likes them to thoroughly document their work to help justify the cost.