Lies, Myths, and Fairytales told in Dentistry
Myth #1. All you have to be is a good dentist and patients will flood your office.
Reality: The public doesn’t know the difference between a good and a bad dentist.
Good Dentists are usually to busy helping patients and don’t spend enough time to promote their dental practices. Bad dentists know how to attract unsuspected patients and later talk them into procedures they don’t need.
Myth #2: Advertising and Marketing is unprofessional.
Reality: Advertising and marketing is the best way to educate the public on what they need and to sell them what they don’t need.
Myth #3: We are in a Recession.
Reality: While The New York Times and CNN is brain washing everyone about the doom and gloom of our economy, those who know how to take advantage of the situation also know how to profit from it. I believe that while some dentists are using this philosophy to promote business, other dentists use it to “clean patients”. The term clean is a term thieves use on the streets in Russia to rob unsuspected tourists.
Distinctive

I personally invented the Overlay Cosmetic Appliance or as the media calls snap on teeth. After my appliance was aired on NBC news stations in 2004, (Video URL: http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&brand=&vid=5c90e5bc-31e5-4e37-9d23-9884be1846d1), it became an instant hit. Soon after, a few dentists determined to cash in on the popularity of my appliance presented a plastic appliance that has been around for thirty years and mostly used in movies to create various characters. The following are comments are from patients who got scammed:
“I went to NYC and wasted $1500 for a lower piece that looks like a toy for Halloween. I had to pay up front and when I picked them up and had them placed in my mouth, the whole office staff raved how real and beautiful they looked. The more I looked at them, the more I hated them. It also hurt. When I removed them, I though my teeth were going to fall out. I called the next day and wanted my money back. I couldn’t handle how FAKE they looked and my family and friends agreed. When I went to the office, the Dr. was a jerk and everyone was so different. How dare he sell a piece of plastic toy for $1,500? To make this miserable story short, he refunded $500 and I had to sign a paper. I hope he gets caught and exposed real soon. I won’t say his name, but since there are only a couple of them using the same appliance and story, I would hope they all meet with law suits soon. I work hard for my money and I feel I have been robed and he got away with it and continues to do so
“Hi Guys I live here in New York and was very interested in the snap-ons until I went to see Dr “I will not go back to again”. 1st of all they told me that the consultation visit was free. But when they told me that it will cost me 2,700 for the upper and lower and I will have to pay up front, no refunds, I didn’t want them. They charged me $100.00 for the 2 minutes of consultation.”
“These are a complete joke. Don’t waste your time or your money unless you want to look like a circus freak. I’ll be lucky if I get back even half of my bill. I called the dentist 4 hours after leaving because granted the time I allowed to get used to it, I still hate them every time I look at them. I had to take them out. Point in case: Snap on teeth are just that; Snap-On teeth. So if it’s too good to be true, it probably is.”
“They look like a big hunk of white plastic stuck to your mouth.”
“They are not worth the money, I wasted mine. And I am angry.”
“My snap on smile looked huge and the dentist told me I will get used to them. At work, my co-workers said I look like Jim Carrey in the movie Mask and everyone had a good laugh. I will try to return them and get my money back. Those teeth are a joke. How can dentists be allowed to sell them?”
This is comment #2805. It was posted in reply to comment #2719 on U.S. News & World Report discussion forum. “I believe you should approach a journalist and ask that an article be run in a newspaper asking the public to write in, if they have had a similar problem with any dentists in the City. Get names of the dentists concerned. Then the letters should be compiled and sent to the FDA or similar body for investigation. Even though you have been forced to sign a `default’ agreement and were `paid off’ with $500 the dentist is still in business as no one stands up to him. I don’t know the legal implications, but newspapers are powerful allies, it is worth a try.”
Is there a journalist out there who is willing to get to the bottom of this quick fix dental scandal?

Arvid Saunaitis
A former dental technician
dentalforum@msn.com
http://tometalk-erudite.blogspot.com

I guess it’s just for yuks. You chuckled a little, didn’t you? I know I did.

Still though, I find the Onion funnier for some reason…

Maybe we should also consider why we pay unemployment to people who “lose their jobs” a.k.a. fail miserably. Sure, we don’t want to blame the workers who run the machines or the middle managers, but they also can fail at their jobs and then they get unemployment…WTF! (Difference in amount, true, but same point.)

Athletes sell their skills to the highest bidder. Free market. Good for them. What if instead, their salaries were determined by a Board of Salary Directors, made up almost entirely of other players? Quarterback pay determined by other quarterbacks–higher pay for their buddies means higher pay for them. Owners had no say in the matter. Don’t like it– too bad. As long as there was still something in it for the owners, they wouldn’t have much choice but to pony up. Does that sound like free market? It sounds like a racket to me.

I wish that were true because the alternative, government, is pretty horrible to contemplate.

But in the US, most company stock is held by fiduciaries – pension funds, mutual funds, etc. Those fiduciaries have the power, not the individual stockholder. Unfortunately, most of these fiduciaries are focused on the short term, which puts the interests of the decision makers at adds with those of the capital owners. This is known as a moral hazard and represents a defect in the market system.

I don’t know the answer to this very real problem. I’ve seen the havoc the politicians brought us with Sarbanes/Oxley (my employer went private to save $7 million a year in compliance costs). But to the degree that decision makers’ incentives are not aligned with those who own assets (or risk), the market functions correspondingly poorer.

So when then guy who is trading the stock for a mutual fund is rewarded on how well he does with his fund each quarter (or year), and the owners of the fund are interested in long term value (e.g. for retirement), things don’t work right and the CEO’s and others get rich contrary to the interests of the owners. And this is just one example – incestuous boards are another, and I’m sure this disconnect exists elsewhere as well (it is a fundamental cause of the mortgage crisis, for example).

Personally, if I have troubles with the amount of money an actor, athlete, CEO, etc, make, I just take my business elsewhere. These people draw their salaries because of the demand by us. I take my $$ to other places. I choose to spend my dollars where I get the things I need, vs paying a millionaire who wants to whine about his “tough” life. If I purchase a product that I think does not give me the value I have paid for it, then I am not going to purchase their product again. It reminds me of the “Buy American” campaign when the Japenese were out producing us, making better quality products, and handing us our backsides on a platter to us, and the American product was a piece of junk. Suppose Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, and Kia are outperforming our “Home” automakers? Instead of being inoovative, we copy what they offer now (100K warranties).

If you really want to change things, how about raising the price of corn, grain, etc to the “oil” cartels in the Middle East. Everytime they raise the price of cruder, we raise the price of food sent to them. Watch Oil come down in a hurry.

Chris