Can anyone else not afford the dentist anymore?

Where do you go? London? I go privately and the check up is about £35. X-rays about £30 each , deep clean £90, filling £200 ish, crown £450. I thought those prices were enough!

My NHS dentist is 175 for basic clean and I can't afford it! All NHS dentists are oversubscribed where I am

Dentists do not have catchment areas. You don’t need to live local to one. At my NHS practice we have people coming from miles away. I’m not sure if some practices have their own rules about it, but I’m not sure whether that’s technically allowed.

If you want insurance, Denplan isn't the only option, we use Simply Health and they have always been very good at paying out.

Look for options in all the next towns. Also in towns close to your parents. Anywhere that you have an address you can use.

@Politicians247UnderwearExtinguishingServicethey won’t kick you off the list for not going twice a year. Usually it’s about 2 years without a check up.

Not the norm at all in my experience. Sounds like your dentist is a rip off merchant!

I go when I'm out of the UK. Friend of mind had wisdom tooth removal In top notch dentist in Thailand and that and the check up was just under £60

I think it's fair to say from all the responses that your dentist is a rip off!!

I pay £60 for a check up and £65 to see the hygienist. My DD goes to a different private dentist who charges very similar.

We live in am expensive area.

You have to think of it as two different things. You couldn’t take out insurance on a damaged car and expect them to pay out for repairs - that’s the reasoning behind being dentally fit before signing up to Denplan etc. You could however borrow money to fix the car and then get it insured.

Some dentists do offer repayment plans for treatment. If yours doesn’t, another one might? Private dentists are in control of the services they provide and set their own prices, so it’s always worth shopping around.

Our dentist charges £90 for a check up and that includes an x-ray once a year (why would you need 4?) and hygienist once a year.
Not NHS - MyDentist. I have a checkup every 9 months.

Mine is £45-55 depending on which dentist you see, under 5’s are free and 5-18 are £15. X-rays are £12 and fillings £120. Hygienist is £70 I think it’s relatively affordable for most people and he’s a excellent dentist

so Do we but it’s only £15 fo under 18’s so very reasonable

You only get totally free dentistry when you are on a really low income. It’s something like less than £6k a year. I used to work for an advice organisation and there used to be people getting penalty notices from the NHS Business Authority because they’d ticked the box saying they were entitled to free treatment and then it turned out they weren’t. The cost of all this bureaucracy trying to recover money from people after the event is mad.

Those prices are insane!!! Definitely shop around.

I'm lucky enough to have an NHS dentist which is only £25 but I have a check up next week and I know he'll say I need a clean which is private and it'll be £85 so I won't be having that. My teeth are good ,I'm in and out of the hygienist within 10 mins so that's a LOT of money for not a lot of work. I think there needs to be different tiers of hygienist appts.

Mine is £70 a check up and £250 per filling. X-rays are included.

I have dental insurance at work but can only claim back the NHS costs. I had to have 4 fillings out of the blue in the summer and I’m still reeling at the expense!

I’d always had good teeth with no issues until I had children 😫

My issue is insurance like DenPlan will only take you when your dental health is signed off as good. I currently have 2 cracked teeth and very bad receeding gums and probably tons of other issues. I haven't been since around the pandemic as the dentist kept cancelling all of my appointments then they kicked me off their books as I hadn't attended an appointment 🙃
I would happily go if the dentist could say I need to pay £150 a month for 3 years to cover all the treatment but everywhere I've spoken to want the money upfront and theres no way I have it so I just keep ignoring it.

I do a mix of NHS and private, my private is not remotely as expensive as yours, you need to find a different private dentist! Ours is £71 for routine check up and £23 for X-rays (outer London)

I dont understand den plan? Can I start it up even of my dentist doesnt offer it?

Yes, that's very much a 'let them eat cake' attitude. The brutal answer is that, if you can't afford the treatment, you simply don't have it. You can live in constant pain and find eating an ordeal every day for many years; but if you don't have the money to pay for something, you have no option but to not pay for it and live (and maybe eventually die) without it.

The problem is that even a 'false economy' is a luxury if you simply cannot afford it. It's a bit like when people insist that not contributing towards a pension or not buying critical illness insurance is a false economy; but when your choice is either to meet your essential bills now or live out on the street and go hungry now, so that you don't have to scrimp and save when you're elderly - if indeed you're lucky enough to live that long - what else can you do?

A century or so ago, people from poorer families would often have all of their (perfectly healthy) teeth removed once they became a young adult - maybe as a big, special 21st birthday present that their parents had been saving up for since their birth - and then replaced with false ones. This was the way that poor people were thus able to live without lifelong fear of needing essential but nevertheless unaffordable work to cure intolerable pain in their teeth - by having no teeth at all that could go wrong. Not my idea of utopia in a rich western country, personally.

But why are teeth and eyes different - and why those two specifically? If the NHS doesn't exist for those two essential parts of the body, why not also exclude, say, the pancreas, and tell everybody with diabetes and pancreatic cancer that, tough, you're on your own there?

Why is treatment free for children, older people, pregnant women and others if it's all considered 'luxury' extras to be able to see properly and live and eat without unbearable permanent tooth pain?

Maybe the thinking is that, like with prescriptions, check-ups at NHS prices are relatively affordable; but even that depends on whether you're lucky enough to be able to find an NHS dentist - and even then, £27 is very far from affordable for many, many people. And if you then need further essential treatment, it's just unachievable for huge swathes of the population.

We're lucky enough that we have got an NHS dentist, but even then, we have called to postpone check-ups when we just haven't had £27 available at all. Plus, there's the tacit threat of them throwing you off their lists if you don't go 'often enough'. They like us to go every six months and we do, wherever possible - not because we necessarily feel that we need to/can readily afford it, but because we're scared of them kicking us out. In that way, it works like an involuntary 'dental plan' - albeit £55 a year, including two check-ups - which I know people will scoff about how very cheap that is.

About the same here - Northumberland.

Wow that’s expensive! Mine is £70 check up, pay half on booking and then the rest on the day, x-ray £10, hygienist £70, same booking principle as a check up

I'm just outside of London and we're looking for another place to go for our hygienist appointments after ours went up from £80 to £115!! We have Denplan with my job but that pays only up to £70 per hygienist visit, so I'd still be nearly £200 out of pocket for the four of us - insane!