Dentist Finder San Diego

June Thomas of the SLATE.com is writing a multi-part article called The American Way of Dentistry. I recommend people read her informative and interesting articles. I decided to provide some key points from her posts to date to get you started.

Part I: The Story of My Teeth (9/28/09)

• Main point is June has had poor dental care growing up and has recently spent a lot of money repairing the damage of neglect.
  • She has spent $45,000 of her own money during the past decade to fix her teeth.

Part II: The Disappearing Dentist (9/28/09)

• As the US population is increasing, less people are becoming dentist.
  • Dental schools are closing because of the extremely high cost of training dentist.
  • More and more dentists are becoming specialist
  • More dentist are working less (which helps control overhead)
• Because of supply and demand, the cost of dentistry is going up

Part III: The Oral Cost Spiral (9/29/09)

• Dentistry only accounts for 4.3% of health care spending in the US, which is why policymakers overlook problems faced in dentistry. (4.3% still was 95.2 Billion!)
• Americans pay 44.2% of dental cost out of their own pocket (compared to only 10.3% is paid for physician costs).
• Dental insurance plans are more like a “discount plan” because people pay their “membership fee” just to get a discount on dental costs.
• Madicaid dental fees are set so low that dentists can’t afford to see those patients.
• People with insurance are more likely to get routine checkups than those without coverage.
• People are much more likely to leave a dental problem untreated than they are to ignore a medical issue.
• Delaying dental treatment doesn’t make the problem go away. In fact, delaying treatment leads to more severe problems and higher costs. This is way dental insurances usually fully cover cleanings and checkups.
• Contrary to the usual practice in health insurance, dental reimbursement levels tend to decrease as the level of complication (and expense) increases, and they’re usually capped at around $1,200-$1,500 per year.
• Fewer than 5 percent of people with dental coverage hit their annual maximum.

Part IV: How Dentists Think (9/30/09)

• 80%-85% of American dentists practice as owner-operators, as compared with only about 20 percent of physicians.
• Unlike medicine, dentist must bear the full cost of the patient care such as:
  • Equipment, supplies, utilities, x-ray machines, several kinds of insurance, rent, equipment loans, and the biggest expense…salaries of a large staff (appointment maker, billing person, dental assistants, hygienist, office manager,…).
• Most dental offices are only open 4 days a week.
  • This helps control staffing costs.
• Many people are afraid of the dentist.
  • Approximately 45 million people in the US are nervous or terrified of the dentist.
  • 23 million people avoid dental care because of fear.
  • Improvements in dental technology has taken a lot of the pain out of dentistry.
• Dentists are a trusted profession.
  • 2003 poll showed that 61% of people rated honesty and ethical standards of dentists as “high” or “very high”.
    • Only nurses, physicians, vets, and pharmacist ranked higher.
• Dental health in America has improved, but Americans’ satisfaction with their teeth has declined.
  • This has helped bring on the increase in cosmetic procedures such as teeth whitening and veneers.

Part V: (Coming 10/1)

Part VI: (Coming 10/2)

Part VII: (Coming 10/3)