Re: Reasons To Be Grumpy thread

[Dave]

How does vision care work with the NHS?

Day-to-day glasses etc are private funded for the most part. Operations for cateracts and the like are free.

And people with certain conditions (diabetes, glaucoma etc) or of oendionable age get at least one free eye test a year. But, as Tank says, you normally have to pay for the specs. Think those on certain social/disabled benefits may get very basic specs paid for.

So this test, plus one pair of bifocals with anti-glare coatings and the scan to come will cost me a total of £182 instead of £217. If I was a fashionista the frames alone could cost twice that!

Likewise my "tuned for me" hearing aid and its batteries are all free. 'Cept I have to pay £70 for a replacement if I lose or break it - but that's covered in my house contents insurance.

[Tank]

So tooth is beyond redemption, it's coming out next week. Total cost for examiation, a little filling today in the adjacent tooth and the extraction next week £56. And if I was of a low or no income it would be free.

[Dave]

So tooth is beyond redemption, it's coming out next week. Total cost for examiation, a little filling today in the adjacent tooth and the extraction next week £56. And if I was of a low or no income it would be free.

Tough luck, Tank.

Is your dentist NHS registered or fully private, Tank? Got fed up with my private dentist constantly pushing treatment insurance. Had I taken thst up 25 years ago, at £15/month for starters (and not all treatments fully covered) I reckon it sould have cost me about 30 times what I have actually paid so far. Two inspections a year, a few cleans and one extraction so far in that period. Swapped to NHS registered as soon as one opened near here.

They did not charge me for capping the stump where a 30 year old cap broke off. Got the cap for free 'cos the sproggy dentist wanted the practice, it was his first one out of college!

[Tank]

So tooth is beyond redemption, it's coming out next week. Total cost for examiation, a little filling today in the adjacent tooth and the extraction next week £56. And if I was of a low or no income it would be free.

Tough luck, Tank.

Is your dentist NHS registered or fully private, Tank? Got fed up with my private dentist constantly pushing treatment insurance. Had I taken thst up 25 years ago, at £15/month for starters (and not all treatments fully covered) I reckon it sould have cost me about 30 times what I have actually paid so far. Two inspections a year, a few cleans and one extraction so far in that period. Swapped to NHS registered as soon as one opened near here.

They did not charge me for capping the stump where a 30 year old cap broke off. Got the cap for free 'cos the sproggy dentist wanted the practice, it was his first one out of college!

Combined practice. I started there in 1986 when it was just NHS. The dentists daughter is now my dentist

[Dave]

So tooth is beyond redemption, it's coming out next week. Total cost for examiation, a little filling today in the adjacent tooth and the extraction next week £56. And if I was of a low or no income it would be free.

Tough luck, Tank.

Is your dentist NHS registered or fully private, Tank? Got fed up with my private dentist constantly pushing treatment insurance. Had I taken thst up 25 years ago, at £15/month for starters (and not all treatments fully covered) I reckon it sould have cost me about 30 times what I have actually paid so far. Two inspections a year, a few cleans and one extraction so far in that period. Swapped to NHS registered as soon as one opened near here.

They did not charge me for capping the stump where a 30 year old cap broke off. Got the cap for free 'cos the sproggy dentist wanted the practice, it was his first one out of college!

Combined practice. I started there in 1986 when it was just NHS. The dentists daughter is now my dentist

Blimey, that's a long time as a customer of the same firm! Surprised you don't have shares there. I rarely get the same dentist twice. There was one lovely young Indian woman - very chatty, relaxed and friendly. Two years later she is now a coiffured fashionista with expensive looking glasses and with a very efficient, but quite distant, professional persona. That's where the fees go . . .

[Icarus]

You gentlemen and ladies are fortunate to have realist costs for dental services.  A few years back our US dentists apparently became organized into a cabal of greedy pirates.  An ordinary extraction now costs on average$200. It seems that almost all extractions are now categorized as surgical extractions and priced at $250 to $350 each.  What the hell is a surgical extraction? Just pull the damned tooth and let me go home.

When I was contemplating the prospect of having my 80 year old teeth removed and having some implants I shopped around for price. One of the leading and prestigious  local practitioners estimated that It would cost $34, 600.  Shopping around, I worked my way down to an estimated $12,750 cost.  Whoopeee what a bargain...

The endodontist that did my root canals a few years ago was only moderately criminal. A root canal cost $940 for a ten minute procedure.  The guy was damn good at what he did but it seems to me that 5600 dollars an hour is pretty much.  OK I agree that because of various delays he could only do about three per hour. Still not bad compensation for using a grinder and a drill. My carpenter also has some skills with the same general type of tools.  Of course after that you must pay for a crown separately. The crown cost ranges from $450 if the crown is made of taffy, up to $2000 if the crown is gold.

On the other hand your eye exams and cost of glasses are more than mine.  I can actually get two pairs of frames and the ground to prescription lens for under $200.  If one is into the vanity thing then you can spend 2, 3, 4 hundred dollars for a single frame that has the name of some famous Italian or French  designer attached.  Then there are the "designers" of  cosmetic items that cost a bloody fortune and have no better affect than some of them that I can buy in the dollar store. 

I think that there had ought to be a palace revolt with pitch forks and flaming torches that reigned in the prices of dental procedures, glasses frames, and cosmetics....and wedding gowns too. In the US the price of medicines are so far out of reason that only a few can afford them unless we have prescription insurance that we can not possibly afford.  Lucky for me that I take no meds at all. But I do know  people who have to restrict their diet because they have to apply the curtailed cost of food to their prescription costs.

I do confess that I am living in the long ago past when a first class Hamburger cost 10 cents.  That's what I get for being so damned old....and crotchety.

[jumbojak]

When it comes to teeth I just deal with the pain. Two broken wisdom teeth should not cost what they charge for removal. Maybe if I find a better job I could afford it but for now I'm careful when I eat and use an antiseptic rinse several times a day.

[Dave]

@ Icarus

A few years ago there was a regular series of progs on BBC radio each about one aspect of American life (gun control, racism, spelling bees, fraternities . . .) and one on the medical situation. One was on a travelling medical fair, voluntary doctors - many not Americans but working, teaching or studying there - setting up mobile clincs in backcountry America. Dentistry was about the most popular service, mainly "first aid" fixing of ongoing problems due to teeth left rotting or broken too long. IIRC they could do no more than fix the immediate pain and broken edges, extractions but no caps or inserts - the local dentists always fought them doing even that, those rich people would rather see poor people suffer than have their "rights" challenged.

[Dave]

In a partial defence of dentist's fees: that sproggy dentist I mentioned did explain a few things.

After years of education, mostly funded by himself, he had to find somewhere to live, lease somewhere for a sugery, lease/buy loads of very specilised and expensive equipment, employ a receptionist or assistant . . . His debt load had more digits in it than about five years of my then salary.

[Tank]

As a matter os interest one does not pull a tooth out. One pushes it in to break the support structure and then lifts the disconected tooth out of its socket. If one pulled the still attached tooth one would pull the gum off the jaw before the tooth was pulled from its support structure.

[Dragonia]

^^^....And one hopes that said tooth doesn't break off during the preliminary pushing process!
I was a dental assistant for 10 years, B.C. (Before children) and I've seen many extractions.... it was one of my favorite procedures to assist with 

[Tank]

^^^....And one hopes that said tooth doesn't break off during the preliminary pushing process!
I was a dental assistant for 10 years, B.C. (Before children) and I've seen many extractions.... it was one of my favorite procedures to assist with 

I've had one extraction many years ago.

[Icarus]

I used a dentist from a rural area for several years. He priced his services within reason...until he was forced to fall into line with the pricing structure of the cabal..  He was a seriously committed Presbyterian  who felt it his responsibility to do some pro bono work.  Every year he spent two weeks in the Guatemala back country, doing free dental work, mostly extractions.

Doctor M knew that I had good manual skills and also at least half a brain.   He offered to teach me how to do extractions so that I would accompany him into the Guatemala jungle to extract  teeth.  Obviously no license to practice was needed in the back country.  I did not do the trip even though I wanted to.  The reason  was that he , though a prince of a person, was too religious for me to have to endure for two weeks.   He worked on or extracted a few of my teeth over time.  When there was a difficult one, like a molar, he would get the tooth out or repaired and immediately say aloud, "thank you sweet Jesus". 

Q: Why is it that so many dentists are disproportionately and outspokenly religious?  Does that have anything to do with the statistics about suicide that puts dentists up toward the top of the list?   

[Dave]

Q: Why is it that so many dentists are disproportionately and outspokenly religious?  Does that have anything to do with the statistics about suicide that puts dentists up toward the top of the list?   

Not something that I have noticed iver here, Icarus. But I could ask why so many dentists here are Asian, Chinese, Australian, Polish . . .  The answer to that obviously has very fifferent origins!

But, an interesting thought, the correlation between religiosity, dentistry and suicide. Could be a doctoral thesis in there.

[Essie Mae]

^
Gadget fan though I am I dislike needless complexity in any system - especially anything that puts fused electronic systems in place of simple mechanical ones. Especially where there is no alternative for power failure in essential systems (Rolls Royce once had a winder available in case the electric window motors failed).

I have grown to recognise the need for electronic engine management systems but miss the day when I knew how to fix all the bits under the hood.

Come the geomagnetic reversal we'll all scrambling to find old Ford Cortinas and he like.

Nah, just drive backwards everywhere!