When dental care started being covered here suddenly my parents had a bunch of urgent issues. The guy is bit of a diva too. He absolutely will not acknowledge the patients at all who not scheduled for procedure with him. Not even a "hi" or anything. Dentists are a weird bunch.

Any medict professional caught with this abuse for an extra buck should automatically get a 20 years jail sentence. Fuck them, throw away the key

I went in for a root canal on a painful tooth in the top of my mouth. When I got there I learned they planned to pull one from the other side where there was no pain. I told them I didn't think it was right, and then they pulled up my files and assured me it was right and we went ahead. But I still suspect it was unnecessary and I lost a perfectly good tooth

Damn is no industry safe to use these days?

Makes me appreciate my dentist. He's a good dude.

Growing up I had two molars removed to make room for my teeth to move backward with braces. The orthodontist said my teeth were too big for my mouth and that I needed the extra space. Literally every dentist I've been to over the 30 years since then has asked why I didn't have those molars. I always tell them, and they always say it doesn't make sense. I'm guessing my family got "up-sold."

Yes, and mechanics are "fixing" perfectly fine cars out there. AC technicians are telling people they need to replace their entire system when a $30 capacitor blows. Lawyers are charging people for many hours they didn't work.

Welcome to the wonderful world of getting ripped off!

PS: have you ever played Eve Online? You'll never get ripped off there. Never.

I have a broken molar on my left side and I've been dealing with it for years because I couldn't afford to have all 8 teeth removed that the dentist wanted to pull because I lost a corner of one molar.
If was explained to me that without that one tooth, the teeth on either side of it would move to fill the gap and would cause other problems, and without the teeth on the bottom the teeth on top would start to drop down and cause more problems, so if i wanted that one tooth fixed I'd need to pay thousands of dollars to get all the teeth on my left side pulled.
Being the gullible idiot I am, I trusted the medical professional and decided that if it had to be done that way, I'd just have to live with it the way it was because I didn't have thousands of dollars to pay for the surgery and my job at the time didn't offer dental.

This has been going on for awhile. My wife was estatic with my familys dentist because he was so honestly concerned about oral health over profit. He retired this year though :(

Honestly, unless this tooth repair gel thing works and becomes available soon, I'd rather have some of my teeth replaced with implants.

I've asked my dentist "can we just skip the endless filling replacements, caps, crowns, and eventual implants and just go right to implants?"

They always say no, and I ask is there a reason why "natural teeth" with fillings/caps/crowns are better than implants - they reply with "But it's your teeth! They'll last a long time before needing implants!"

Yeah, so I'll need implants eventually, can't I just get them now before I put more fillings, caps, crowns, and eventual implants? Ain't nobody got time for that.

"but your natural teeth will last a long time!"

Yeah, but they ain't so natural after 5 procedures, and I'd rather avoid the ha$$le and just get the implants now instead of implants and a lifetime of repairs.

They always say no, and it's probably because they make way more money fixing bad teeth than replacing it with something permanent

EDIT

Thank you everyone!

I've gotten better answers here than from my dentist, so thank you everyone for educating me on the reasons why.