Saw this comment made about 10 years ago… do you agree in 2022?

[miketheooo]

“Dentistry is a lot better than being an MD nowadays. Less hours, higher per hour salary, higher chance to be in private practice, and better insurance reimbursements. The only other thing that I think is better is a PA program, its cheaper faster and gets you 100K in 2 years time.”

I am referencing this thread as a whole if you guys want to visit it: Can't decide!! Dental School or Medical School?

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[Eli Manning]

I disagree. As a dentist/ dental specialist, the harder you work the more $ you make. As a PA you make a salary and you work for someone else. You don’t have that ability to increase your income by seeing more patients and growing as a practitioner. Just my 2 cents.

 

[miketheooo]

I disagree. As a dentist/ dental specialist, the harder you work the more $ you make. As a PA you make a salary and you work for someone else. You don’t have that ability to increase your income by seeing more patients and growing as a practitioner. Just my 2 cents.

Thank you for the reply x2 super bowl champion Eli Manning. I more specifically was referencing the first part, “Dentistry is a lot better than being an MD nowadays. Less hours, higher per hour salary, higher chance to be in private practice, and better insurance reimbursements.” Do you agree with this or disagree?

 

[Eli Manning]

I disagree. MDs still make a lot more than dentists overall. Also there are still areas of medicine where insurance reimbursement is very good. There are also MD specialties with good hours- Look at pain medicine within anesthesia.

But dentistry is a great career, good pay, great hours. Do not have to be on call. Especially as a general dentist. Some Specialists take call (oms mostly). But as a general dentist call is non existent. If you want something that caters to lifestyle and family time then being a general dentist is great.

 

[2TH MVR]

I think the difference is that at one time .... if you were a dentist. You would be making MD doctor money or more assuming you were in private practice. Along with that doctor money .... you were the boss and had total autonomy. This is GOOD. Further back than 10 yrs (20-30 yrs .... ME) .... there were very few DSOs and most of us were "forced" to start, or buy a private practice or buy into a partnership. This was VERY GOOD.

Now. Excessive DS tuition. Expansion of Corp dentistry (including non-dental Corps like Walmart, CVS, Smile Direct Club, etc, etc.). More women entering the dental workforce wanting to work part time which favors these Dental Corps. Dentistry is being packaged. Marketed. Manipulated. To benefit big business (DSOs, Insurance companies, Private dental schools, etc.). This is BAD. There are more jobs available, but they are not the highest paying jobs.

Medicine has it;s own issues. Right? Politics regarding Healthcare for All.

In the end. Dentistry is what YOU make of it. Every profession is.

 

[miketheooo]

I think the difference is that at one time .... if you were a dentist. You would be making MD doctor money or more assuming you were in private practice. Along with that doctor money .... you were the boss and had total autonomy. This is GOOD. Further back than 10 yrs (20-30 yrs .... ME) .... there were very few DSOs and most of us were "forced" to start, or buy a private practice or buy into a partnership. This was VERY GOOD.

Now. Excessive DS tuition. Expansion of Corp dentistry (including non-dental Corps like Walmart, CVS, Smile Direct Club, etc, etc.). More women entering the dental workforce wanting to work part time which favors these Dental Corps. Dentistry is being packaged. Marketed. Manipulated. To benefit big business (DSOs, Insurance companies, Private dental schools, etc.). This is BAD. There are more jobs available, but they are not the highest paying jobs.

Medicine has it;s own issues. Right? Politics regarding Healthcare for All.

In the end. Dentistry is what YOU make of it. Every profession is.

Essentially dentistry is becoming more like what medicine is. Do you guys see insurance reimbursements continuing to decline? Is it still better than insurance reimbursements if a GP physician?

 

[PerioDont]

I think the difference is that at one time .... if you were a dentist. You would be making MD doctor money or more assuming you were in private practice. Along with that doctor money .... you were the boss and had total autonomy. This is GOOD. Further back than 10 yrs (20-30 yrs .... ME) .... there were very few DSOs and most of us were "forced" to start, or buy a private practice or buy into a partnership. This was VERY GOOD.

Now. Excessive DS tuition. Expansion of Corp dentistry (including non-dental Corps like Walmart, CVS, Smile Direct Club, etc, etc.). More women entering the dental workforce wanting to work part time which favors these Dental Corps. Dentistry is being packaged. Marketed. Manipulated. To benefit big business (DSOs, Insurance companies, Private dental schools, etc.). This is BAD. There are more jobs available, but they are not the highest paying jobs.

Medicine has it;s own issues. Right? Politics regarding Healthcare for All.

In the end. Dentistry is what YOU make of it. Every profession is.

Agreed.

But at the end of the day it is still possible (harder every day) to be in PP as a dentist and run your own ship.

This is NOT possible in many specialties in medicine and you are forced to work under someone else. To me this is a huge con, along with the obvious loss of autonomy you lose all the tax benefits with being an owner as well.

 

[allDAT]

MD wage growth has accelerated past dentists since the early 2000s.

You can still make more while working far less than an MD (specialists included) as a dentist but it’s increasingly unusual.

In the 90s my dentist and mentor had a net income before taxes of 1M as a general dentist in Brea, CA doing crown and bridge and extractions 4 days a week. That’s unbelievable.

 

[yappy]

everyone is working harder for the same, or less money.
Do what you enjoy. Save/invest 25+% of your income and avoid debt.

 

[charlestweed]

I disagree. MDs still make a lot more than dentists overall. Also there are still areas of medicine where insurance reimbursement is very good. There are also MD specialties with good hours- Look at pain medicine within anesthesia.

But dentistry is a great career, good pay, great hours. Do not have to be on call. Especially as a general dentist. Some Specialists take call (oms mostly). But as a general dentist call is non existent. If you want something that caters to lifestyle and family time then being a general dentist is great.

Doctors make more than dentists because they work harder and longer hours than dentists. Like you said earlier, they have to give up their personal freedoom....they have to be on call. They have to work on the weekends because lives have to be saved 24/7….365 days/year. Many dentists on this forum only work 4 days/wk. Nothing in life is easy. To make more, you have to work harder and make more sacrifice (more schoolings, losing family time etc).

My younger brother is a GI doctor. The place where he works at only hires him 3 days/wk and he earns a very nice 6-figure income. But Like me, he doesn’t want to sit around doing nothing. It’s in the Asian blood. So for the other 2 days in the week, he works at a VA hospital and he plans to stay there for a long time so he can get a nice retirement package.

My brother in law is a GP doctor (Internal medicine). He has his own office. He sees a lot medicaid patients. He works 8+ hours at his office and 2-3 more hours at home. I don’t know how much he makes but I think it’s comparable to what I make now.

So if dentists are willing to work as hard as their MD counterparts, they should have similar income.

 

[charlestweed]

I think the difference is that at one time .... if you were a dentist. You would be making MD doctor money or more assuming you were in private practice. Along with that doctor money .... you were the boss and had total autonomy. This is GOOD. Further back than 10 yrs (20-30 yrs .... ME) .... there were very few DSOs and most of us were "forced" to start, or buy a private practice or buy into a partnership. This was VERY GOOD.

Now. Excessive DS tuition. Expansion of Corp dentistry (including non-dental Corps like Walmart, CVS, Smile Direct Club, etc, etc.). More women entering the dental workforce wanting to work part time which favors these Dental Corps. Dentistry is being packaged. Marketed. Manipulated. To benefit big business (DSOs, Insurance companies, Private dental schools, etc.). This is BAD. There are more jobs available, but they are not the highest paying jobs.

Medicine has it;s own issues. Right? Politics regarding Healthcare for All.

In the end. Dentistry is what YOU make of it. Every profession is.

Having lived in CA for more than 30 years, I saw the expansion of the dental corps long before you did. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It gives a clueless new grad like me to earn a very good living right after school. I didn't have to take the risk to open my own office. I got 3 job offers at 3 different corps (Western Dental, SmileCare, and Brightnow) right after graduation. I went from driving a beat up Honda Civic to driving a 7-series BMW…..from living in a small studio in a gheto area near the school to living in a nice 2800sf first house in an upscale neighborhood. It's instant gratification....thanks to the expansion of the dental corps. One of my co-residents couldn't find a job because there weren't any corp offices in her area. There were jobs available but they weren't good paying jobs like what the corps paid me. She later became a program director at my ortho program.

And when I started my own office, I didn’t have to take out a lot of loan (only $70k) because of the saved money that I earned from working for the corps. And with the constant flow of income that I continue to earn from working at the corp, I didn’t have to put in a lot of efforts to market/to build my practice. Another bonus for working for the corp is I learned how the corps keep the overhead low. I've seen a lot of young orthos who had paid for a lot unnecessary stuff for their offices and they later regretted for wasting a lot of money.

 

[Screwtape]

Hmm….overall I’d say I disagree. I think the average physician has it better than the average general dentist. However, I do think if you’re talking about moderately successful (and beyond) dentist owners vs the average physician then yes it’s much better as a dentist. Honestly when talking about successful dentist owners I’d say they are better off than the vast majority physicians.

PA’s income plateaus pretty quickly and will always be second fiddle to someone making the bigger bucks. Hard to compare that to a career like MD/DDS where the potential to make the truly the big dollar figures is much higher.

 

[2TH MVR]

Having lived in CA for more than 30 years, I saw the expansion of the dental corps long before you did. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It gives a clueless new grad like me to earn a very good living right after school. I didn't have to take the risk to open my own office. I got 3 job offers at 3 different corps (Western Dental, SmileCare, and Brightnow) right after graduation.

I think if you polled most dentists (including myself) ..... the emergence of dental Corps is a bad thing. I agree on one point. More JOBS for new grads, PT dentists and older dentists like myself. I can't complain about that.

But I don't see dental Corps as being a positive influencer in the field of dentistry. It was bound to happen. Corps taking over everything and squeezing out the mom and pops.

 

[charlestweed]

I think if you polled most dentists (including myself) ..... the emergence of dental Corps is a bad thing. I agree on one point. More JOBS for new grads, PT dentists and older dentists like myself. I can't complain about that.

But I don't see dental Corps as being a positive influencer in the field of dentistry. It was bound to happen. Corps taking over everything and squeezing out the mom and pops.

Corps and private practices see different types of patients. Corps treat patients that most private practices don’t want to treat….medicaid, HMO, Insurance plans that don’t pay well, low income patients etc. People with good income don’t want to go to a place that has high turnover of dentists, long wait time, poor customer service, zero doctor-patient relationship like corp offices. Corp offices attract 80% lower income earners. Private practices only want to attract the top 20% income earners. If you agree to treat the same type of patients that the Corps treat (and know how to keep the overhead low), you easily beat them.

I think the reason private practices are losing patients is more people drop PPO plans and switch to HMO plans.

 

[bergus95]

Agreed.

But at the end of the day it is still possible (harder every day) to be in PP as a dentist and run your own ship.

This is NOT possible in many specialties in medicine and you are forced to work under someone else. To me this is a huge con, along with the obvious loss of autonomy you lose all the tax benefits with being an owner as well.

What are some tax benefits?