Dentist Consumerism

I never had any big problems with my teeth. My siblings had braces (one had them more than once even), but the worst thing that's ever happened to me was chipping some teeth. Add some cavities and my dental history is complete. Every 18 - 24 months I work up the nerve to go to the dentist, and it usually coincides nicely with moving, so I hardly every see the same dentist twice.

Two weeks ago I had my first dentist appointment in almost two years, and I was mostly just a little mad at wasting two hours of my life on a dentist visit. A friend of mine had recommended this dentist to me, the office is within walking distance of school, and they take my insurance. So I went, with no negative or positive expectations and I was appalled.

The waiting room looked like a mall for teeth! Between your normal routine care poster reminders, there were advertisements for veneers, whitening procedures and other dental stuff I had never heard of. Every poster was sponsored by some sort of a dental accessories' manufacturer, and the receptionist asked me if I anticipated needing to set up a payment plan. I just shook my head, but not because I didn't think I would need one, but because I was shocked! I hadn't even seen the dentist, how was I supposed to know whether I could afford the bill.

Then I went in to see the dental hygienist, who treated me like a 3-year old. She politely informed me of THREE different products I could buy on my way out to help with the individual needs' of my teeth. No thank you. She then told me I would have to come back another time to see the dentist, since we had taken such a long time already. I said no, but no thanks. I didn't mind waiting for a while, but I was definitely NOT going to come back a second time (and pay another $20 co-pay!). If we were out of time, I would just leave without seeing the dentist, since I didn't have any dire dental emergencies anyways. I said this politely and non-threateningly, just matter-of-factly. All of a sudden a window of time opened up in the dentist's window. How convenient!

Almost 90 minutes after stepping foot into the front door I finally saw the dentist, who said that three of my teeth were in absolutely dire need of serious work. Really? None of them hurt... what's wrong? My two chipped front teeth apparently need to be redone as soon as humanly possible, and my chipped molar would need to be fixed even sooner than humanly possible to avert some kind of serious dental crisis.

I chipped my front teeth in 1993, and my molar in 1999. 16 and 10 years ago, respectively. I've seen at least three dentists with each of these teeth and they have all said the same thing: no need to do anything unless the teeth start giving me problems, or the look of my chipped teeth bothers me. No and No.

So after telling this newest dentist of mine that I had no interest in doing anything about my chipped teeth she looked at me as if I had told her I wasn't interested in fixing the life-threatening internal bleeding in my abdomen. But I said No. NO thank you.

She then pointed out four teeth that had cavities and said she would get a pre-certification from my insurance to see if they would pay anything to get those taken care of. Sure, go ahead. I'll let you fix my cavities, but I do think that it's a little strange that my insurance pays for four cavities per year and you found exactly four of them today...

I will be calling my dental insurer to inquire about costs/co-pay for fixing cavities and also to see if I can go to see a different dentist in my network without having to pay out of pocket. I walked out of that dentist's office utterly perplexed and appalled at how I had been bombarded with advertisements and tricked (unsuccessfully) into spending a pretty penny for something that is not as necessary as this lady told me it was. I can only liken this feeling of commercial onslaught to the horrors some people experience when they step foot onto a car sales lot.

Before I forget - the proverbial cherry on top of this dental visit was the TV blaring Dr. Phil in every room, an episode about children resulting from affairs and the corresponding child support. I asked the dental hygienist to turn it down and she turned it down about 0.001 notch and said something about how she enjoys Dr. Phil. *vomit*