Yea, it was a cheap shot. Thanks for the info. I always wondered why less dental work was done. In the US, dentistry can be such a racket that you need to be careful who you go to. Bad work issues aside, there are dentists that will search for anything they can call a cavity to fill, tooth to pull, or pain to "investigate".
I finally found a good dentist, on recommendation by a friend. I had some pain in my tooth and another cracked tooth (due to a bad filling years ago). They fixed the cracked tooth and looked at the painful tooth. Didn't find anything wrong with the painful tooth and instead of offering a root canal (like my previous dentist did) they explained how something in my jaw was swolled/out of whack and it would settle down in about a month. I was skeptical, but they were right. That saved me about $2,000 and a missed day of work.
yeh if the basics are free we tend not to bother with the fancy stuff, aesthetically we should probably try harder.
I did go to a decent private dentist last year and it was light and day from the cheaper ones, it's just really expensive, but you are paying for someone's years of training so I guess it is what it is. I wish I understood a bit more about it as a kid as I'd have straighter teeth now, but nobody bothers explaining what they are doing
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