A little Dentists rant

STM317 said:

Alternate title:

Rich guy with a 911 Turbo complains about minor inconveniences that prevent him from making even more money, while average people struggle to afford basic medical care.

Nice.  Way to crap on a completely reasonable topic.

Just because the guy has a high skill profession with expensive tools and heavy schooling requirements does not somehow disqualify him from wanting customers not to waste his time.  

Since you claim to know all about him, perhaps you can provide some evidence to back your claim.

If not, then you don’t know how much he charges, you don’t how hard he works, you don’t know his expenses .... you are just applying some arbitrary assumption based on his profession. 

In reply to pinchvalve :

There definitely are more specialists now.  I think alot of it has come from growth of the knowledge base in dentistry.  It used to be that if you had an infected tooth, it just got extracted and people expected to lose all their teeth and have dentures by the time they were 40.

Now my expectation is all my patients keep their natural dentition (or at least most of it) for the entirety of their lives. 

Another example, everyone used to think that an upper molar had 3 canals only.  You'd do the root canal and if it failed, well, the tooth must be cracked and extract it.  Turns out the vast majority of the time there are 4 canals and if you find and treat all of them, success rate is extremely high.  Finding that 4th canal can be tricky and the expensive microsopes and 3D scanners that the specialist has lets them make sure the canal is there, where it is and lets them instrument it.

STM317 said:

Alternate title:

Rich guy with a 911 Turbo complains about minor inconveniences that prevent him from making even more money, while average people struggle to afford basic medical care.

I have had personal, face to face conversations with The Doc (at High Plains Track - One Lap) about the work he has done in 3rd world countries as humanitarian aid.  The Doc is a good man.

STM317 said:

Alternate title:

Rich guy with a 911 Turbo complains about minor inconveniences that prevent him from making even more money, while average people struggle to afford basic medical care.

Dude, seriously?  Who pissed in your Wheaties?  So if I complained about customers blowing me off from my auto shop somehow that'd be valid?  But because I'm a dentist I don't have the validity to vent about peoples extremely poor and disrespectful behavior?

For the record, I'm not rich.  There are well known members of this board who are far wealthier than I, owning multiple cars costing $75,000-100,000+. Some of them owning several of them, yet they don't seem to draw your ire, what's up with that? In fact, one of them just sold two of his cars and cleared close to 6 figures for them.  I was happy for him, as was everyone else.  Or maybe you want us all to be miserable and fail in our endeavors?

I sold pretty much everything I had to buy the cheapest generation of 911, that cost FAR less than many of our other board members vehicles and definitely far less than what many of our members could sell their huge, extraneous vehicle fleets for.  Yet somehow you seem to begrudge that of me, why?

I'm a self made, small business man,  You could've done what I did, I didn't have some kind of magic wand that made my life for me.  No one paid for all of my schooling, my office, my business, ANY of it!  I got out of dental school with massive debt, was active duty military (Yeah, one of the REAL 1% who stand up and serve our country!) and lived off of $1500/month while I paid my school loans. I'm still serving in the reserves in fact, 19 years last month.

People blowing me off and costing me 1/2 a day is not a "minor inconvenience", it's a huge drain on my business!  How would you like to not get paid for half your day, meanwhile you're still paying out all your business overhead?  That sound good to you?  How about you send me some of your paycheck then and see if you enjoy it?

You made your choices, I made mine.  As we like to say on base "Choose your rate, choose your fate"

Question for the rest of you, on other boards you can block members, that possible here?  I don't care to interact with this guy any longer.

I don't think it was meant that seriously...I mean flaking out on an appointment is a E36 M3ty thing to do regardless. I personally have nothing against dentists, it's a job that requires lots of education and training, a decent amount of real work, it's an important service society needs, and it's kind of gross, it SHOULD pay well. It's not like being an interior decorator or Karl Lagerfeld's cat.

GameboyRMH said:

I don't think it was meant that seriously...

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing, but if you read the last part of it, it's clearly a negative comment, and there are emoji's available to make it clear.

Heck, I was disappointed it wasn't light hearted.  I really wanted to call him an anti-dentite and ask the doc if he had converted to Judaism just for the jokes, but I think it's pretty clear it was meant will malice. Based on what Doc and John noted, sounds like it was WAY off base and that he clearly does not know him.

And Doc: I don't think you can block him, but you can do your best to ignore him.  Heck, at least he didn't threaten to kill you in a back ally! (that DID get the guy banned). As a personal note, I could never do what you do.  It's not even the schooling or the hard work, it's (like Gameboy noted) just too gross for me (personal issue I know).... so kudos to you for even being able to do it.

That sad part is, there might actually be some CAR related topic you two might have the same interest in, or be able to help each other with and that is very unlikely to happen now.

docwyte said:

STM317 said:

Alternate title:

Rich guy with a 911 Turbo complains about minor inconveniences that prevent him from making even more money, while average people struggle to afford basic medical care.

Dude, seriously?  Who pissed in your Wheaties?  So if I complained about customers blowing me off from my auto shop somehow that'd be valid?  But because I'm a dentist I don't have the validity to vent about peoples extremely poor and disrespectful behavior?

For the record, I'm not rich.  There are well known members of this board who are far wealthier than I, owning multiple cars costing $75,000-100,000+. Some of them owning several of them, yet they don't seem to draw your ire, what's up with that? In fact, one of them just sold two of his cars and cleared close to 6 figures for them.  I was happy for him, as was everyone else.  Or maybe you want us all to be miserable and fail in our endeavors?

I sold pretty much everything I had to buy the cheapest generation of 911, that cost FAR less than many of our other board members vehicles and definitely far less than what many of our members could sell their huge, extraneous vehicle fleets for.  Yet somehow you seem to begrudge that of me, why?

I'm a self made, small business man,  You could've done what I did, I didn't have some kind of magic wand that made my life for me.  No one paid for all of my schooling, my office, my business, ANY of it!  I got out of dental school with massive debt, was active duty military (Yeah, one of the REAL 1% who stand up and serve our country!) and lived off of $1500/month while I paid my school loans. I'm still serving in the reserves in fact, 19 years last month.

People blowing me off and costing me 1/2 a day is not a "minor inconvenience", it's a huge drain on my business!  How would you like to not get paid for half your day, meanwhile you're still paying out all your business overhead?  That sound good to you?  How about you send me some of your paycheck then and see if you enjoy it?

You made your choices, I made mine.  As we like to say on base "Choose your rate, choose your fate"

Question for the rest of you, on other boards you can block members, that possible here?  I don't care to interact with this guy any longer.

It wasn't meant to be offensive. I don't know or care about your net worth. I don't have a problem with highly trained and educated people making decent money. I didn't mean to imply that you're some monster that preys on people in need, only to benefit yourself. Although I can see how it would be interpreted that way. Other members that know you personally vouch for your character, and I've seen enough of your posts to believe them when they say that you're a good man.

I was simply trying to provide some perspective. It seems like you have a ton of things to be grateful for, and it seemed silly to me to complain about something so trivial when you're so blessed in so many ways. Especially this time of year, when we're supposed to reflect on the good things in the world. I apologize for upsetting you. Hopefully you know that there's no hostility on my end, and I'll refrain from future interaction as you wish.

I just heard this morning on the radio that missed medical appointment cost us (as a country) something in the neighborhood of 150 Billion dollars a year.  That's some serious money by anyone's standards.

But I do agree that dental work costs too much.   I have really "good" insurance and it's really just like having a nice coupon book for 1/2 off the expensive E36 M3 I need to have done.  Over the past 25 years if I totaled up the amount I've spent on dental work I'd be rocking a C7 vette today.

I'm very fortunate to have decent dental insurance and a great dentist, so no complaints from me.

I told him earlier this week, when he worked me into his busy schedule to replace a lost filling, that he couldn't retire until I had no teeth or died.

In reply to KyAllroad (Jeremy) :

The sad reality is that dental "insurance" just isn't really insurance at all.  It's a defined benefit plan, where they pay a percentage of each treatment, up to a set maximum a year.

The issue is that maximum amount really hasn't changed in over 30+ years, while the cost of treatment has escalated dramatically.  Believe me, I'd love to lower my prices and be able to offer my services to more people who need them!  Unfortunately my office overhead is in the 70% mark and I just can't afford to. 

I try to help out as much as I can and discount my time, do "two-fers" on fillings and do humanitarian missions.  I know the need is there, just can't do it all unfortunately.

In reply to STM317 :

Let's agree that you could've worded your initial post *much* better. 

Apology accepted, appreciate your follow up post.

I have deleted two small comments from bystanders.    

Please, lets all take the high road.

I was going to say vs other medical needs, dental seems to be relatively inexpensive comparatively. 

I can't even remember how much my sleep study cost a few years ago even with fantastic insurance. 

In reply to John Welsh :

Thanks, John. I tried to delete my post after I remembered that I don’t want this place to be Facebook and you did me the favor.

In reply to STM317 :

In reply to gearheadmb :

LOL!!

Why is it, at least in my world (medicare) the two things I could you use treatment(eyse/toofeses) the most for aren't covered?

I think I just answered my own ? can you say  pharmaceutical  lobby ......sheeesh!!! DW you're a good person thank you for your service sir!!!

I am pretty sure the pharma lobby has nothing to do with that.  The reason is more what Doc talked about above.  Dental and vision insurance is not really insurance.  Most dental and vision expenses are pretty predictable, which does not make for much of an insurance model.

It would be kind of like having insurance for oil changes.

I thought this was going to be about patients lying about flossing.

Adam

aircooled said:

I am pretty sure the pharma lobby has nothing to do with that.  The reason is more what Doc talked about above.  Dental and vision insurance is not really insurance.  Most dental and vision expenses are pretty predictable, which does not make for much of an insurance model.

It would be kind of like having insurance for oil changes.

Yeah' pretty predictable except when you need them and you weren't nor prepared to shell out $2500 for a bridge or perhaps $800 for new set of 'cheaters', but if one persists in pursuing life threatening lifestyles that are preventable from an 'insurance model' perspective .....it's business as usual.......yeah and my budget is that tight that Im buying dollar general 1.5 ten packs.....late  Sorry DocW