Doctors and dentists are crooks!

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Dentists and opticians are crooks in my opinion. I live in the UK so I get National Health Service treatment, i.e. it's free to see a doctor, so I don't get that problems so much with doctors (my psychiatrist and social worker are amazing). But here in the UK opticians are usually paid for (although I get reductions in cost due to being on income support benefits), and dentists get paid by the NHS for every filling they do, so they want to do as many as possible. I've already got four fillings in the past year and one of them is falling apart

I've usually had good ones, especially dentists. I've had a few who just seemed inept or had poor bedside manners.

This thread keeps reminding me I should really go to the dentist.

I hate dentists. I've had some good dentists who I felt at ease with, but that doesn't stop the horrible pain I endure when they stick a needle in my mouth, paralyze me and drill through my teeth. Oh well, it's inevitable.

I've always had a great house doctor, who treated me with understanding and care, and was always generous as to give me a few months off from school. I shall always be grateful to her for that.

About the costs, I always got paid back for any visit to a doctor or dentist, thanks to my country's optimized healthcare. Belgium is similar to Holland in this aspect (and in many other things as well).

My father was a doctor. He was also a real human being, at least when it came to his patients (not so much when it came to his family). He told me it was rather common for other doctors to do unnecessary surgery, just to make more money. He was the only one protesting this at his hospital - it really made him mad. But nobody else cared - the rest just kept quiet.

Also, when I was a kid, I kept getting cavities for a while. Then we switched dentists, and I mysteriously never had any more cavities. Interesting coincidence, huh? (No, I don't think my diet or oral hygiene changed one bit, so that's not the reason - I think the previous dentist was a criminal who should have all his teeth ripped out without anesthesia).

Ever since then, I basically don't trust doctors or dentists. I wonder what tiny percentage of people go into medicine or dentistry out of a deep love of humanity and desire to ease the suffering of total strangers? Nah - almost all of them are in it for the money, and the way the system is set up, they get paid for "treating" you - the more, the better (unless they work for an HMO or some national health systems - then you have the opposite problem - they get penalized for treating you). How convenient that they are also the ones diagnosing! It's the same conflict of interest or corrupt incentive we have with auto mechanics. Who really knows if what they're telling you is true? How do you know?

To me it's absolutely outrageous that doctors and dentists would cheat. It's one thing to rip people off on unnecessary car maintenance or repairs, quite another to cut people open unnecessarily, or "forget to remove foreign objects before sewing someone back up", therefor necessitating another profitable surgery. There should be extremely severe penalties for this kind of thing (along the lines of ripping their teeth out without anesthesia), but there aren't, so this stuff happens constantly.

There is also the problem that medicine is still more "art" than "science". There is a legitimate grey area where one doctor will say "this situation warrants surgery" while another would say "I think we should wait and see", etc. We're really only still emerging from the Dark Ages here. Someday people will look back in horror at our medical care - like we do to the medieval doctors that sawed people's limbs off w/out anesthetic, or tried to cure people by bleeding them to death, etc.

Don't even get me started on the pharmaceutical companies. They have no interest in curing anyone - no profit in that! Much better if they can just "treat" your illness, optimally requiring a lifetime prescription to their drugs. Even better if their drug causes horrible side effects or even new illnesses, which they can then sell you even more drugs for. Better too, if they can get you addicted to the drug, so that even if you want to quit it, it will be a horrible experience, or just impossible.

Government is supposed to look out for the general welfare of the people by regulating and overseeing industry - but do they? On the contrary, they allow the food supply to become so polluted (just one example: High Fructose Corn Syrup & Partially Hydrogenated Oil in practically EVERYTHING???) that everyone is getting fat, old and sick long before their time. So Big Food makes money, Big Pharma makes money, but the people suffer and the nation goes bankrupt paying for "health care".

What an insane world. Or is it me?

There are a lot of bad medical and dental practitioners out there.

You really need to ask around and find out who comes recommended and expect to pay for quality.

Not all good ones are expensive, but they normally are not cheap. Cut-price care usually means low quality.

i have a dentist appointment on monday to get one of my teeth taken care of. im so nervous!
i've had about 15 fillings so i know its going to hurt especially those damn novacine shots they give you. i'll be shure to take my stuffed with me to get me through that most unpleasant experiance

Teeth can be crooked, not so sure about dentists.