Dental charges! Why so high??

[itsmefolks]

Is it me or do others think the same?? Us Brits are having the p..ss taken out of us by dentists! I mean hang on a moment £180.00 for this £160 for that. O yea, and £400 for the other. All of which is done in half an hour or so!
Just what the f…k are they playing at? Lets look at some figures shall we..
It takes 5 years to train to be a dentist. It took me the same to become a qualified electrician.
A dentist mainly deals with just one thing teeth. As a tradesman I have thousands of different situations I have to be prepared for and deal with.
Also pro rata I should be charging £3k and more a day at dentist rates!!
I also have a responsibility for peoples health, and in particular often peoples lives!!
If I make a mistake on a rewire and burn the house down god forbid, lives could be lost.

It just makes me angry that these people can act as gods because they know there is jack all we can do without them. Comments appreciated.

[bednobs]

just go to an NHS dentist then. A private dentist is a business and can charge whatever they like

[lardhelmet]

Get dentures?

[boxtops]

Dentists do mainly teeth but they also do handy things like looking out for mouth cancer, and I think we'd find that dentistry is quite a complicated matter really, and they too deal with many different situations. I am not related to a dentist by the way, but each of us is skilled in our own professions and they are not really comparable. I wouldn't want to have to stare into people's gobs every day for a living, and dentists were at one time well up the scale for suicides because nobody likes them (that is not a joke!). NHS prices are less than the figures you're quoted so perhaps your dentist is private (as many are)?

[ttfn]

Cost of dentistry is going through the toof now - debentures for dentures?

[Redrum]

Please dont get me started on dentists, are you just talking NHS or dentists in general ?? They are all money grabbng grot bags, charging 16.50 for some guy to shove a long handled mirror into your mouth to say all is fine which takes a matter of seconds on a checkup, if you dont have check ups because you cant afford them, you get struck off ! I may as well just stroll into my dentist surgery, deposit the said amount of cash charged for a check up and walk out again. What is the point ???? It is a waste of my hard earned cash !

[boxtops]

If I hadn't gone to the dentist over the years then all my teeth would have fallen out by now, and I certainly wouldn't have wanted that.

[lardhelmet]

It must be a really minging job - wouldn't fancy it myself I must admit

[saxy_jag]

Forgive me - I didn't realise that electricians had to train for seven years at graduate and post-graduate level in order to qualify, or that dentists have any less a responsibility for health and life than an electrician.

I'm assuming you can afford to pay for private treatment, given the treatment prices you quote. If so, then lucky you. That's your choice - NHS treatment is there at a much lower cost if you want it. Admittedly you won't get anything but essential treatment for that but I'd certainly be in a much worse state if it wasn't there.

[itsmefolks]

Just answer me one thing. What is the motivation to go into dentistry? I can just hear them now…”O, I want to probe around in peoples smelly mouths all day and pull kids teeth out making them scrawk”! Yea right!! No financial motivation then eh? By the way my wife has a Masters Degree in health and certainly doesn’t get the ridiculous money teeth pullers get. My wife and I both went into our careers because we both had a natural bent and flair for our work. I`m sure that dentists for the most would struggle to say they thought the same??
No I certainly have not paid the quoted prices. I am just passing on information I have heard. It’s the moral side of the argument I am trying to get across. Easy money, and people doing far harder, better, and more qualified work because they want to.

Opened a can of worms here eh?

[theonlyone]

I'm a NHS patient and my dental treatment is ace ,
but maybe you get better treatment in different areas of the Uk ?

[craft1948]

What's an NHS dentist?

Redrum £16.50 for a check-up......I wish it's £34.00 at my dentist.
I had 2 crowns done 4 years ago.......£1200.00!!

[boxtops]

I think several people might want to dispute the "more qualified" statement in your last sentence. I too have a Masters degree but I could not work as a dentist, I could not be a nurse or an optician, we each qualify in our own areas of expertise and our preferred career pathways. I don't know many people who take a higher degree without thinking that it would improve their career prospects. What about solicitors, they have degrees and law qualifications and they earn shedloads of money for knowing the law and charging their clients for passing on that knowledge? - I don't see the difference, professionals get paid for their professional expertise. You get paid for being a professional qualified electrician. We all do our own thing, some earn more than others. And yes, dentists like teeth and find the work rewarding and fascinating - podiatrists do the same with feet, and personally I couldn't stand to work with either.

[Quentin_Crisp]

Please ignore crafty above....she does'nt have any teeth, as i've got both sets....and one made an right embarrassing hickey too!

[boxtops]

Rent-a-Dent, hey Quentin? You could be on to something here!

[craft1948]

Ignore Quentin.......he got the hickey from my mother's teeth..:-)

[Quentin_Crisp]

LOL......15 all, you cheeky little minx :0)

xx

[boxtops]

Family Rent-a-Dent, this gets more interesting!

[craft1948]

but she did nickname you L'Oreal............

[Quentin_Crisp]

Plenty to go round, crafty........:0) x

Happy to see you, sweetheart.........you too, boxtops

[saxy_jag]

I'm sure we all want the best jobs we can get and that people go into dentistry for the same reasons they go into medicine and law - it's something they have a flair for and that can earn them a reasonable salary, and with seven years' of hard slog behind them I don't blame them. There are easier ways of earning the same money as a dentist earns (for instance, there's a rather classy-looking 'gentlemen's retreat' round the corner from my dentist and afaik you don't need a degree to work there).

I've got a couple of degrees and have a flair for teaching, but my job and salary don't reflect that. I'm not complaining - it's my choice.

Oh, and one thing you do learn from a graduate/post-graduate education - as your wife will no doubt tell you - is to clarify claims before presenting them as evidence. No-one ever had a dissertation passed on the basis of what someone heard.

My dentist certainly isn't in it for the money. She doesn't take private patients and our area is pretty poor. As I've said in another thread, if she's presented with a challenging case, she'll rise to it. She could just whip out the tooth and be done with it and s*d how it affects my saxophone playing, but instead she'll try every treatment she can before it comes to that - and I don't pay a penny extra for that.

I'm sure there are plenty of grafters out there on minimum wage who think that electricians/plumbers/plasterers/decorators etc. are onto a good thing, charging phenomenal rates for shoving a few bits of wire through a floorboard or mending a hole in a ceiling. I'm sure you'd be among the first to jump up and justify your fees. It's all relative.