It's always been so insulting. When you're a kid and a teenager you can have the government's insurance and then your parent's insurance. But as soon as you are an adult that starts working minimum wage without any social advantages, you have to pay for the expensive dentist out of pocket. So lots of young people that are relatively poor will pass the beginning of their adult life without dental insurance, and avoid going there.

And if they're lucky and evolve into the job market, they can eventually find an employer that offers dental insurance! With any luck they won't spend more than a few years without insurance. Otherwise if they stay at minimum wage, they can also keep paying out of pocket, because it's certainly not their retail job that will offer dental insurance.

No, I'm still not bitter at all about this experience. /s

At least this supposed to change eventually, thanks to the NDP.

Canada has a national dental plan now.

https://www.canada.ca/en/services/benefits/dental/dental-care-plan.html

The moment robotic and/or 3D flesh printed limbs get viable, sewing back your clean cut limbs will be a luxury too, with "economic" options of fake limbs that can be put on the stump, since "you can always just ask your boss very nicely to give you a call center job instead".

I have “good” dental coverage that claims to pay a decent percentage of costs, but it’s of “reasonable and customary costs”. We live in a high cost of living state and it’s just not reasonable. They never seem to include the bus ticket to Mississippi to find someone willing to do it that cheaply.

….. as a parent paying for yet another set of braces where insurance covers “up to 50% of reasonable costs” or more realistically about 20%

I am planning a move to San Antonio, and the biggest determining factor for me has been proximity to Mexican dentists. I have fucked teeth. My bottom wisdom teeth came in laying down like battering rams and crushed the back 4 teeth on both sides, completely destroyed them. I had no dental insurance and no ability to pay out of pocket, so I just had to deal with the pain. My mom managed to find a dentist to prescribe me Vicodin while it was happening, but that was the extent of what we could get done. Since then, I've had several abscesses because of it, and had to have several removed. I still need a few removed and implants or something. I brush my fucking teeth, I don't understand what the problems are. But I'll be happy to be near to cheaper dentists.

Hungary used to be just like that, but it lead to people dying of complications, so it had to be undone, but not for replacing teeth, because that will surely lead to children eating sweets instead of fruits, and of course adults won't buy Brandname™ electric toothbrush and toothpaste (it lead to people in general avoiding dentists like the plague due to "fear of having your teeth pulled with no way of replacing them").

for THIRTY MINUTES????

Recovery from General is kind of rough but I think it's the only thing that my insurance would cover too. I had all the work in my mouth done at once under general for 8 hours. The follow-up 4 hour procedure was done under IV sedation where they give you fentanyl.

That stuff is a miracle. It feels easy on the body, like I woke up and could semi function after a couple hours instead of two or three days later from the GA. I didn't feel or remember anything. And while I was nervous because in my previous experience I really like opioids, there is no lingering wish to go to the dentist for more really expensive drugs. Heck, I don't remember any of it.

When my tooth started rot, the pain was so severe that I tried to pull it out with my hand. Now I am eating only on left side of my mouth. Hope left teeth won't die...

Not a doctor, but I guess it depends on the case, the anaesthetic used and so on. As a kid I had to have a primary molar pulled out and it hurt like hell with local anaesthetic. Recently I had all four of my wisdom teeth pulled out and I didn't feel a thing during the procedure (also with just local anaesthetic) - it only hurt for a few days afterwards while the wounds were healing.

Dental health is the one medical speciality where access to healthcare in Europe is almost as bad as the US.

On paper, most European countries include it in the universal health, but in practice it either only covers doing the bare minimum on life threatening conditions or there's only one dentist in the public healthcare system per million people.

It's mostly the same in Canada too but we are moving in the right direction at least!

If there's a dental school nearby you might be able to get it done cheaper at their clinic.

I had 4 wisdoms and my teeth are now fucked because of it. I had a molar that was fucked too. The wisdom disintegrated it, but I also couldn't afford to get it removed. So I used to get food stuck inside it all the time. #FuckCapitalism.

Medically necessary extractions are fairly affordable. If yours isn’t, I’d shop around for a different insurance.