[ilkkao]

After experiencing this first hand in the US it was really nice to return back to Europe where in my opinion unnecessary operations and active selling of special cleaning procedures are somewhat more rare.

I just had my yearly checkup and the dentist again noticed few small inactive cavities and said we should just monitor them like last year.

[hannob]

In Germany pretty much every dentist will recommend you a "profesionelle Zahnreinigung" (professional tooth cleaning), and if you lookup what studies exist to show that it does any good, there's only one study that's basically useless (they tested a combination of the professional tooth cleaning and a lecture on proper self tooth cleaning and showed that this helps, so in the end you know one of those or a combination helps, but you don't know which one). So yeah, this is pretty much a problem in Europe, too.

[Semaphor]

I drink a lot of coffee and black tea. I very much value the half-yearly cleaning just to remove the dark spots that are not a health-risk, but look bad.

And almost every private tooth health insurance covers those anyway, so if you have that for others reasons, it’s included.

[stefan_]

The tooth cleaning is much the same as what happens on the yearly cleaning your insurance pays for (and highly recommends you do). Is that one also "basically useless"? How much study does one need to judge if mechanical dental tartar removal is beneficial?

[xadhominemx]

Did you read the article? One of two studies they provided was from Europe.

[moffkalast]

In my experience we've got these two options here:

- socialized dentistry, where unless you're screaming in pain dentists take two peeks into your mouth and say it's fine and tell you to get out so they can take the next patient in the 200 person line outside (and shill their afternoon private practice to you if they happen to be the more shady type)

- private dentistry, where they'll always find something random that somehow materialized out of thin air since you were there 6 months ago to fix and bill you half your monthly salary for it, despite saying they fixed everything last time

Like, can we please get some fuckin middle ground...

[hgomersall]

In the UK, loads of people are desperate to get an NHS dentist. When slots become available they are snapped up immediately, often by people that are more than capable of paying privately. I would suggest many would prefer the socialised system, perhaps because the over treatment is less likely to happen.

[Broken_Hippo]

IIRC, Brazil includes dentistry in its regular healthcare. Cleanings are cheap-to-free so folks wind up getting cleanings and the like. There are also a lot of dentists in Brazil - I think it is the 3rd largest dental system and employes something like 15% of the world's dentists. Hardly rushing folks through while they scream in pain.

(I don't know the intricacies of the Brazilian system other than it includes dentistry and is a combination of private and public systems, so I might be wrong. Folks from Brazil seem to be happy enough with it, but they might be biased).

[eliseumds]

I'm Brazilian, lived in Portugal, Germany and Australia for a few years each, and can attest that dental care in Brazil is at least 100x better in every way. It's much less bureaucratic.

Many universities offer free-of-charge consultations, although in a limited fashion. In big cities, I've seen mobile clinics helping the homeless. It's just part of the culture now. I'll even risk saying that Brazilians don't smoke because it stains the teeth. Lots of people do drink black coffee but they'll brush their teeth afterwards.

A private company called Sorridents has taken over dentistry in Brazil with more than 500 branches. It works like Subway/McDonald's. It's affordable.

Yes, there are many more dental professionals in Brazil, but the population also spends more on it (relative to income), so it balances out. You can even get dental insurance through your energy company, but I believe the vast majority of the population doesn't have any [1].

As an anecdote, I've waited TWO YEARS for Bupa (Australia) to tell me that my wisdom teeth extraction would cost 7000AUD and they'd need to move an entire team to a hospital to do it, and I'd need to pay for general anesthesia too (some 1500-200AUD more), which is absurd. I've also consulted with three other top-rated dentists in Sydney who told me the same. I flew to Brazil, paid 500AUD in a top-notch clinic, and the procedure took less than an hour.

In both Germany and Australia, dental cleaning felt rushed, polishing wasn't done properly, they always came up a thousand little things that added to the final cost. It's ugly, it's scammy.

In Portugal you can get decent dental care due to the large amount of Brazilian dentists.

[1] https://www.iess.org.br/publicacao/blog/brasileiro-ainda-tem...

[Semaphor]

Not sure how it works elsewhere, but isn’t Germany the middle ground?

Basic operations are all socialized by public healthcare, anything extra (and that includes white fillings instead of the ugly ones…) is private.

[modo_mario]

>- socialized dentistry, where unless you're screaming in pain dentists take two peeks into your mouth and say it's fine and tell you to get out so they can take the next patient in the 200 person line outside (and shill their afternoon private practice to you if they happen to be the more shady type)

What would you define as socialised healthcare? Like would Belgium or the like qualify?

[moffkalast]

Tax funded healthcare services that you (generally) don't have to pay for when receiving care?

[modo_mario]

Here we pay but a small amount.

Where has what you described been your experience?

[elpescado]

To be precise, from the city of Zurich. Which is indeed a part of Europe, but hardly representative.