Dental Tourism: HELP

So I got hit with a mega dental bill. I've had a few people suggest Costa Rica for a cheaper solution on this. A few friends have been there but I figured if ever there would be a response, it would be here. Anyone go there? Suggestions? Warnings?

No help with the subject really, but I have been to Costa Rica a few times. I trust the education system and the people there WAY more then Mexico.

The only negative things I have hears were in an article where peoples local dentist held it against them when they discovered that they had been cut out of the gravy. They most certainly wont want to get involved if any complications arise or if follow-up work is required. Might be worth asking the person in Costa Rica if they have a referral in your hood.

Used to be that Hungary was the capital of dental tourism.

You might want to get a new family dentist when you return and not divulge your old one.

Dental work costs so much I've been contemplating diy vise grip/vodka extraction

Watching with interest. SWMBO is going to need some serious work in the near future, and the cost is partially to blame for how she got in the situation in the first place.

FWIW, you don't need to go go to a foreign country to get a crappy dentist, we have a decent number of them here. I could have done a better job on her last extraction.

I spent $3k for a root canal/crown eight months ago that has started hurting again.

Yeah keep us posted on this. These kinds of things fascinate me.

Have it done at a college or university that has dental students that is in training to become one. It will provide them valuable hands on experience and fix your problem. Cost wise, I don't know but I heard from several that it was very cheap or free depending on what is needed.

My brother is in Costa Rica right now, Christmas Vacation not for dental work. Says it's lovely, so at least there's that.

There are a lot of expatriate American dentists in practice in Costa Rica. They offer identical service and care as a US dentist, but their malpractice insurance costs and overhead are <5% of what it costs in the US. A very good friend of mine had extractions and posts surgically inserted in Costa Rica last year. From his perspective, it is IMPERATIVE that you have a Dentist here that will be okay with you doing the $$$ work overseas, because there is still a good amount of post-procedural care and check-ups needing done. For example, he had some teeth extracted and posts implanted over 2 trips down. He then had the US dentist do the permanents to the Costa Rican posts.

All in all, he flew down twice for 4 days each trip, paid out of pocket for the dental work and expenses while out-of-country, and said he still saved thousands doing it that way. Your mileage may vary though.

I did that 5 years ago. It took me a year to get into the program and three months to even get started... two years to complete the work. The very issue I'm having now results from work they did unfortunately. It's 30 to 40% of the cost to do it that way. My issue is I have two broken front lower teeth. That's NOT good when your a wedding officiant in people's pictures. I can cover a bit on it but not for long and I can't wait that long to get into the program. Although they aren't into the root yet, it's a matter of time. When that happens, there's no choice in any of this.

Sine_Qua_Non wrote: Have it done at a college or university that has dental students that is in training to become one. It will provide them valuable hands on experience and fix your problem. Cost wise, I don't know but I heard from several that it was very cheap or free depending on what is needed.

In reply to Toymanswife:

I've had a ton of dental work done and it really doesnt look that compilcated. I'm sure with a little poking around on the internet and a few new tools your husband could make a couple front teeth look presentable.

Sine_Qua_Non wrote: Have it done at a college or university that has dental students that is in training to become one. It will provide them valuable hands on experience and fix your problem. Cost wise, I don't know but I heard from several that it was very cheap or free depending on what is needed.

THIS

Had a family member who needed work done (filling, root canal, and maybe an extraction) and didnt have much money for it who went to the dental school (Ohio State in this case) and had a bill that was a fraction of what a regular dentist would charge.

Yeah, its students, but they are supervised. All in all they told me it was a good experience and will be doing it again.

you want to look into this. Probably cheaper than travel expenses to go out of country...

Have you considered Dental Insurance? The FloridaBlue plans we used require a 6 month waiting period between joining and coverage for adults, but if you are considering travelling you are thinking longer term. If you join before the 15th the waiting period would start at the first of the next month.
The more expensive plans (~$50-$75/month) are the ones that cover decent amounts of the procedure. The cheap ones usually exclude the bigger procedures. In your calculations make sure to account for the fact that most dental offices charge 25-30% more than the covered amount and you are responsible for the difference. Example: plan covers 50% of the crown cost which the insurance considers worth $700, and the office charges $1k. So you end up paying $650 for a $1000 crown. The savings on the first crown alone is enough to cover the 6 months of premiums you pay while waiting. In our situation it was an even bigger savings because children have no waiting period before coverage and the office didn't charge as much of the difference they claimed they would.

I have dental insurance. It's actually discounting the procedures by about $1000. I got the insurance 5 months ago and it won't cover what's being done until the 1 year point. We don't have a lot of choices in SC because we don't have our own insurance program like a lot of states do because our Governor won't take the federal money.

In reply to Toymanswife:

Look into this http://academicdepartments.musc.edu/dentistry/patient_care/walk_in_care.htm

See if they do you a lot better on prices (I'm betting they will)

Some of those places pretty much do it at cost, and seeing that you (likely) need some more advanced work, you will likely have people very close to graduating doing the work with close supervision.

I recommend finding a well regarded dental school and going there. Medical insurance hasn't been something that my family had and an affordable option was always going up to Boston (I think it was Harvard Dental School) and paying the medical school to do the work. You basically pay for the cost of materials, which are always top tier, and they have an experienced person overseeing what they are doing. This doesn't mean it will be flawless but it does mean it will not cost a ton.

EDIT: Just realized that Apexcarver mentioned it first. I support this idea.

I figured I'd update everyone on how things have turned out. I ended up cancelling the appointment with the local dentist to get a second opinion at the dental school. They completely disagreed with his assessment and wanted to try filling those three teeth. I was pretty sure that one of them did indeed need a root canal and crown but figured if they could buy me some time for my dental insurance to kick in, that would be great. $425 for xrays and fillings sounded much better than well over $3000.

Almost four hours in a dental chair and the front two bottom middle teeth are filled. It was very close to the nerve but they did what the other dentist refused to even try. The tooth that I was concerned about WAS to the nerve so they had to set up a root canal.Three hours to get the root nerve out that Thursday morning and three hours to fill it back up on afternoon. I go back Tuesday at 1pm for them to do a post and core. They are pushing it a little fast since I have to be in Vegas for SCCA's national convention Wednesday morning.

So for about $1000 by the time I get the crown done... and many hours... I'm a lot better off financially. I'm pretty sore from all of that but at least I get to go to Vegas and my teeth will be mostly fixed. In two weeks, I should be an official patient of the dental college again.

That sounds like good news to me.

Two anecdotal reference points to support your decision to fill: My mother had a filling when she was a teen where the dentist accidentally hit the root and filled it anyway. He told her she would need a root canal soon. It took 45 years before she needed the root canal. My wife just had a root canal. It was the result of a filling that came within a mm of the root and probably should have been a root canal 22 years ago. You may have bought yourself more time than you think.

Great news.

We've had similar experiences over the years with dental 2nd opinions.. seems that some of these practitioners are absolute shysters.

Glad to hear it worked out!

Glad it worked out. I've got two that are touching the roots for over ten years now. My dentist gets a lot of new dentists right out of school and they seem to be much better than going to the old experienced guy I used to go to as technology has evolved quite a bit in recent years.

Yeah, he refused to do the fillings because his experience told him it wasn't worth the effort, that those teeth are going to require root canals at some point.

Everytime I've done "hero" work like that its come back to bite me in the ass. I'd much rather tell the patient what to expect and take care of it now, rather than have them pissed off at me when they need the root canal 6 months down the road.

You'd be amazed how often (as is 100% of the time) people forget that I told them ad nauseum that this would happen. They think once the filling is in, all is well. Then they're incredibly pissed off at me and its all my fault that they're in pain on a Saturday night. Showing them my notes and reminding them of our previous conversations just makes them even more pissed off. No thanks.

Please don't go out of country to get dental work done. That's not to say there aren't skilled Doc's elsewhere, of course there are, but they're hard to find. Then you'll have no follow up frequently on expensive, complicated treatments.

For instance I'd NEVER restore a set of implants that were placed out of country. I'm on the hook liability wise if anything happens to them and I have no idea if they were done properly. Similarly if any complications arose from work I didn't do, I'd be charging my full fee to handle them, vs if I'd done it to begin with I'd be comping that.

Go GRM for your car parts, don't go GRM on your body. This is as much of an art as a science....

I'm the patient that remembers everything. I had a tooth that was declared a "Board tooth" for the big test all dentists take as a backup patient. I was reassigned a new patient and she clearly said "uh oh" when she was drilling. She went to far. The teacher admitted to me that the tooth had only needed a filling and the student had messed up. They wanted ME to pay for the root canal and crown. Nope! That wasn't happening. I had paid attention and could throw back too much of what they said at them.

It may just buy me another six months. That's what I need for the dental insurance to kick in. I am find with that. I had told the other dentist that I would take the risk but he refused to fix it. So this way has worked well for me and we will see how it all pans out.