No Dentist For You

Inability to afford basic dental services is a large problem for many poorer Americans, so naturally when an entrepreneur comes along ready to offer basic dental services at a more affordable price dentists' trade organizations leap into the fray to get the operation shut down. It's proprietor, after all, isn't a dentist and just because it only takes a dental hygenist to do a basic cleaning is no reason you should be able to get a basic cleaning without paying top dollar for a dental school graduate. No reason, that is, unless you want to make dental care affordable.

The focus on America's horrible, horrible system of financing health care tends to obscure the fact that it's layered on top of a horrible, horrible system of delivering health care in which there are all kinds of restrictions on the supply of services that make basic care substantially more expensive than it ought to be.