Not one of you mentioned the high cost of dental materials, which in turn justifies higher cost of treatment. Companies, producing dental materials have no problems selling the same stuff 10 times cheaper in other countries. Anything, that has "dental" on it is several times more expensive, even Q-tips.
In regards to the fact, that :
"Dentists may not seem rich to a lot of pre-dents or dental students, b/c unfortunately the prohibitive cost of attendance is creating a selection bias that favors middle-upper middle class students who may have grown up in financially privileged households. Less than 3% of medical/dental students come from the bottom 20% of US household wealth, and that will only continue to exacerbate as tuition continues to inflate."
The situation has nothing to do with income - unlimited loans are available to most people. It is because people with higher income in general have better education and more responcible. They raise children encouraging the desire to get better education and job , as well as to stay out of prison. Public schools are still free and community colleges are very inexpensive.
After all being in a profession, which involves dealing with infection, blood, puss and negative emotions every day as well as being dictated by anyone of what to do and how to behave in personal life has to be compensated accordingly
You are right to point out that the dentist's take-home pay is not the only cost to running the practice. But dental
supplies seem to hover
somewhere between 5% to 9% of the cost of running the business (the "cost" being all payments leaving the business, including profits). On that scale, the profits of the practice owner hover around 35% to 45%.
You are also right that there are good reasons for dentists to be compensated well. It's not glamorous work. Dentists provide great value! I would heartily argue with anyone who wants to artificially lower any professional's pay out of jealousy, and that's often the tone you feel from articles such as the one that inspired this thread. My suspicion, however, is that dentists' income is artificially higher than it might otherwise be, because dentists have protected themselves from market forces. But... I also think dentists could reduce the cost of care and make as much if not more if they got out in front of the marketplace changes that
need to be made.
My main concerns are these:
1) That dentists don't seem to have the maturity to partner together into practice groups, an action that saves a lot of overhead waste. The main force driving this grouping right now is corporate dentistry---but then the providers are no longer the owners, and that's not good for anyone.
2) That dentists, via their state-provided powers, jealously guard some petty practice privileges that should otherwise be provided more cheaply by professionals with less intense training. Let the patients decide if they think a Master's degree is sufficient to fill a cavity.
I'm not hoping for a future where dentists are diminished. On the contrary, the future I wish for is a pyramid with dentists at the top, as owners partnering together into groups and hiring therapists, hygienists, and assistants. Not only is that cost-effective delivery of care, it's also lucrative. But that's not happening. Instead, outside money is coming in to create corporate practices that follow those superior models. (Group practices do better. Practices that hire therapists do better.) As it stands, dentists are being left behind and eventually hired by those companies... because there was a quicker buck to be made in the short term with this tribal squabbling over single-owner practices and trying to stop dental therapists from drilling cavities.
States could enforce laws that require practice owners to be dentists, but they'll only do that when dentists are willing to step up to the right business models and demonstrate that they can play ball. They're not doing that. They have their heads in the sand, with ridiculous consultant-authored books lining their bookshelves telling them how to build the practice of their dreams.
It's fundamental... to the dentist's private intellectual appreciation of oral health. It would be nice if all service providers has a doctoral level of understanding of their field, but in the 21st century people just want service providers who follow the best practices, handed down from the researches who do have the doctoral level understanding.
