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Comment by yardie | Hacker News Reader

My wife, who is a recent immigrant to the US, when she goes to get her teeth cleaned here is what happens: dental hygeniest does there thing, X-rays are taken that weren't asked for, dentist come in to review the photos, sure enough her mouth is falling apart and she has loads of cavities, then they want to discuss a treatment plan. When she gets home we discuss it and agree $8000 in Invisalign is a bit excessive. Then we promise not to use that dentist ever again, try another one for the next cleaning, where the cycle continues.

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You are saying that multiple dentists found issues with your wife's teeth, she routinely refuses treatment, and this is somehow a scam?

She's going in for cleanings. If she's not experiencing problems, what does that tell you about the prognoses she's receiving?

That sometimes problems don't hurt until they're serious problems?

I would rather have a tooth taken care of before I need a root canal?

>If she's not experiencing problems

Subjectively not experiencing problems isn't really in indication of good health though.

For teeth, over a long enough timeline, it is. If nothing starts hurting, the tooth is fine.

This whole post is about dentists recommending unnecessary treatment. And that has been our experience.

She never had all these issues when she was seeing her dentist in her own country. But a few years in the US and her teeth are practically falling apart. Is it possible her previous dentist with no financial incentive found nothing wrong with her, yet the new one who is trying to make next quarters profit has every incentive to upsell?

Find out if dentists are trained and licensed the same way in your wife’s home country as they are in the U.S.

This feels like a particularly derogatory take on the OP's wife's home country, which is ironic given that TFA is about "horrendous dentistry" in the US. Literal comment from the article

"Dentists are not required to learn how to place implants in dental school, nor are they required to complete implant training before performing the surgery in nearly all states."

"I was frankly stunned at how bad some of these dentists were practicing,” Prisby said. “It was horrendous dentistry."

The whole article is about whether a “dentist” is qualified to place implants by performing oral surgery. [1] The coloquial term “dentist” does not actually carry information about what procedures an individual is qualified to perform. Trying to compare “dentists” from different countries with different training and regulatory regimes without getting into the specifics of what those trainings and regulations are is going to mislead you to false equivalence.

[1] In the U.S. the basic DMD/DDS is referred to as a “dentist” but does not perform implant surgery. At minimum that would require extra training. The article is extremely sloppy about clarifying what qualifications the individuals who performed the procedures on Becky Carroll have. We don’t know if those individuals were unqualified or qualified and practicing poorly.

Run away when you hear “treatment plan” because you are about to be robbed.

And "financing". We walked into a new dentist's office when moving to a new town, and their (immaculate and luxurious) front desk had racks of glossy literature talking about their various no-interest and low-interest financing plans and we just turned around and walked out. These are not dental offices. They are banks that have a small dentistry operation on the side.

Treatment plans are used in every medical field and are required for insurance billing.

The bigger problem is that most hospitals and medical offices won't tell you the billing codes for procedure pricing until there's a treatment plan, which requires seeing a doctor first, effectively preventing shopping for care by price.

This is terrible advice. I didn't go to the dentist for years, and when I went back, I certainly, undoubtedly required a treatment plan. But my dentist went through everything - every spot on the X-ray, backed up with photos taken with a dental camera. The point is, the offering of a treatment plan is not a metric to base anything on.

The biggest red flag here is that Invisalign is not a cavity treatment. If she needs a treatment plan for cavities, that plan should include some treatment for cavities.

This was 100% my experience in Los Angeles, and nowhere else.

Do dentists make a lot from Invisalign? Wife and I both were being pushed Invisalign at a new dentist office and I'm pretty sure neither of us need it.

$8000 for Invisalign sounds insane. I spent around $3k in 2017 for Invisalign by an orthodontist, not a dentist, and I'm in a very HCOL area.

80% of what your dentist does for Invisalign is just handing you the trays which are made by Invisalign.

this is where you write a one star review warning people of this

I’ve had that happen and gone back for a later booking for the next step. The dentist took the day off and the assistant said well you can just cancel that it wasn’t needed anyway. Well WTF was I even booked in for?!

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