In today's edition of The New York Times:For American dentists, times have never been better.
The same cannot be said for Americans’ teeth.
With dentists’ fees rising far faster than inflation and more than 100 million people lacking dental insurance, the percentage of Americans with untreated cavities began rising this decade, reversing a half-century trend of improvement in dental health.
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In some cases, the results of poor dental care have been deadly. A child in Mississippi and another in Maryland died this year from infections caused by decayed teeth.
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Dentists’ incomes have grown faster than that of the typical American and the incomes of medical doctors. Formerly poor relations to physicians, American dentists in general practice made an average salary of $185,000 in 2004, the most recent data available. That figure is similar to what non-specialist doctors make, but dentists work far fewer hours. Dental surgeons and orthodontists average more than $300,000 annually.
“Dentists make more than doctors,” said Morris M. Kleiner, a University of Minnesota economist. “If I had a kid going into the sciences, I’d tell them to become a dentist.”
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The dental profession’s critics — who include public health experts, some physicians and even some dental school professors — say that too many dentists are focused more on money than medicine.
“Most dentists consider themselves to be in the business of dentistry rather than the practice of dentistry,” said Dr. David A. Nash, a professor of pediatric dentistry at the University of Kentucky. “I’m a cynic about my profession, but the data are there. It’s embarrassing.”
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“The dentists don’t want to see these kids [on Medicaid],” Dr. [Amos S.] Deinard said.
Full story here.
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4 comments:
Ah, I suspected as much! I have a dental plan which isn't too bad. I've had all my old silver/mercury fillings replaced by some kind of composite. But, in the course of doing that, one dentist made one of my teeth so thin that part of it broke off. And another dentist claims another tooth has cracks and may break at any time. The big thing now is to gig the customer (oh, did I say customer? I meant patient, of course) for crowns, which I so far refuse to get because my dental plan isn't that good, and I'd like to have enough money to still support my biblioholism.
I was seriously damaged seven years ago by a local Canton dentist who placed a very allergenic and toxic nickel-aluminum-beryllium bridge into my mouth and charged me $5000 for the work. When my jawbone swelled up to the size of a grapefruit and black metal was leeching into my jawbone (I took pictures), she refused to remove the work unless I paid her another $5000 for a non-toxic alloy. She told me that it was because she was a business and that the only reason she woke up and went to work every day was to make money, not to help people. She is also married to an oncologist and uses the only carcinogenic dental alloys available. I think she wants to give her patients cancer so that her husband can make money treating them! She drives a big black SUV that looks like Darth Vader. She is a very sick woman.
Wow, that's a frickin horror story. One would never tell from the beautiful smile in your pix that you were ever in that situation. Sorry that happened to you. I wonder how you handled it.
Our whole health care system is a horror story these days.
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