How much does dental treatment cost?

[MarvEll]

I've been booted from my nhs dentist apparently (amazed I've had it at all in the last 10 yrs).

Firstly I am sick of the bloody Tories not giving me access to timely and affordable dental treatment. I put the blame completely with them.

I'm struggling to get my kid registered and I wasn't able to be seen during my pregnancy and year of exemption, altho if I'd paid to go private I could have been.

I've been told £95 is the cost for check up. Is this right? It seems like a lot of money when I don't actually think anything is wrong, it's just been years and years and babies since I've had a check up.

What do you pay?

Yabu - £95 a year dental is reasonable
Yanbu - stuff the bloody Tories for sh*tting up our NHS health and dental care!

@MarvEll

Thanks everyone. Good to put it into perspective, might just have to grit my teeth (without doing any damage) and get on with it.

I was booted off because I never remembered to book appointments regularly enough. It's fair enough from their perspective, and I'm absolutely not blaming the dentists, it just seems like a flawed system and I wish that something was being done about it.

I didn't know it was Blair tho - thank you for enlightening me @SilverontheTree

I'm really sorry you got booted off @MarvEll and FWIW I think it's pretty disgusting. Dental health care should be a right in this country. The majority of ordinary people cannot afford private dental health care, and it's a travesty that they can just boot you off with no warning, purely because you haven't been enough...

I have seen a number of threads on here this past few weeks from people saying their dentist has ditched them. And I know FOUR people in real life who it's happened to. Two of them have children, and the dentist has STILL dumped them and refuses to have them back!

And whilst (like you) I don't want to get angry with the dentists, it's hard not to, because it does smack of them only being in it for the money.

No other section of health care dumps you - if you don't see them enough. Only dentists. And it should be stopped. They don't give people any warning they will be dumped if they don't book a check up soon.

It's SO easy for the time to pass you by, and covid has sent everyone into a tailspin and made the past 2 years fly by, so if people had no problem with their teeth, they wouldn't even think about the dentist. And taking into account that many dentists have been shut for almost half of the past 2 years, many people struggled to get an appointment anyway, even if they did remember.

Finally, many dentists cry 'oh but we hardly make any money from it!' I don't believe them. I have never known a poor dentist. As I said, something needs doing about this problem.

@SilverontheTree- Most American dentists won’t give out price lists. especially if you don’t have dental insurance. I paid more for root canals fifteen years ago in New England. Dentistry is expensive, but losing teeth is not fun and even more expensive.

I had a filling, scale and polish today for £70. Think this is massively reasonable. After (quite literally) years of appointments being cancelled at my shambolic NHS dentist, I moved to a private one so my kids could actually get seen and get the orthodontics I knew they needed.

@hellofrostymorning

Do the maths - 40% pay cut over the last decade + massive shortage of dentists = which of my patients should I cancel tomorrow so I can see someone who hasn’t booked in for 4 years???

Shrodingers dentist is closed half the time and raking it in from doing root canals for £62.10??? Eh?? How does that work??

At least £75 for an initial consultation here, plus the cost of x rays.

I pay £20 per month and that gets me two check ups and two hygienist visits a year, plus 10% off any treatment. I asked on Monday because I need new crowns- £500 per crown. Last year, I had a small denture, two crowns and a broken tooth fixed. That cost £1600.

@blobby10 if your partner was paying £8000 for indemnity they will have been providing the highest end dentistry, implants, sinus lifts, bone augmentation that is not the cost for the average dentist. I’m not saying the costs to be a dentist aren’t high, I pay out a months salary to go to work every year between indemnity, BDA, GDC etc. but in 20 years of working in dentistry across all settings the very most for indemnity/insurance I’ve ever heard was £5000 for someone involved in implant rehabilitation cases. Sorry I just don’t think exaggerating costs is helpful and there is no need even NHS care costs so much more than people realise.

Have a ring around - in my city there is a huge difference in prices between the private dentists. My private dentist is in a bad area of town and is significantly cheaper than dentists in more desirable areas.

We had to go private several years ago after moving house. Ours is quite reasonable, about 30% move than NHS. We paid similar to your quote for first check up, now pay £33 per check up (includes a £5 PPE charge) DH pays £60 for the hygienist, and paid £165 for a white filling recently. Our kids are generously done our dentist on NHS. Dentist is best and loveliest we've ever had and they have much broader range of treatment options so personally as we are in lucky position that we can afford private, we will never go back to NHS