Socialised healthcare means losing your teeth - Telegraph Blogs

Socialised healthcare means losing your teeth - Telegraph Blogs: "Is it any surprise that NHS dentists are more likely than private ones to just pull teeth out, rather than bother to fix them? I wouldn’t let the NHS anywhere near my teeth because I know that most of the better dentists have jumped ship - in part thanks to Labour’s dental reforms.

NHS dentistry doesn’t even have the merit of being free. It’s just cheap, and the service provided shows. I mean, who wants an old-fashioned amalgam filling in full view? I certainly don’t.

It was a breath of fresh air switching to a good private dentist. The dentists are friendlier, give better advice and take more care. As a schoolboy using the NHS, I hated the long, boring delay stuck with out-of-date magazines in the dreary waiting room before getting to see an irritable, clumsy dentist.

I found that preventative care was never more advanced than being mechanically told not to eat too many sweets, whereas in the private sector, the dentists are properly concerned with problems not occuring the first place. In the state sector, dentists make their money from drilling and filling, so they have an incentive against providing preventative dentistry. In the private sector, they make their money from selling cosmetic treatments."