As the father of a young dentist, I'd like to soften the con artist label, and give some possible reasons why dental work is costly.
My daughters dental school cost 60k a year, plus she lost 4 years of earnings say $40k (low) a year. So it cost $100,000 a year or $400,000. This is not including her housing for 4 yrs or her bachelors degree required to get into dental school or the Masters to make her resume look better to get into a dental school. So, say it is costing 7% interest, and she wants to clear that debt in 10 years. That payment is $4,644, split into 250 working days that is $186 dollars a day. But she only sees 30%, she works for a corporate dental company and gets 30% of what she bills. She need to bill $619 just to pay her debt. If she sees 10 patients a day that means each patient has to pay $62 just to cover her debt payment, but wait, there's more, because of her higher* tax bracket, she pays about 25% tax, so she really need s to charge each customer $83 just to cover her debt. Then she also has to earn a living, if she charged $233 per patient, she gets 30% or $70, times 10 patients a day is $700 times 250 days is $175,000 a year. The seems reasonable if not low pay for a dentist.
In reality, when she decided to become a dentist she had already graduated and worked 3 years. it took her about 6 yrs because she needed the premed classes and the timing was wrong for the dental schools, thus the Masters while waiting, and the big kicker, mom and dad paid for all of it. When she started only 9% of the class had not taken any loans. The cost to get in, is why dental care costs so much. Even with her fine record and showing how serious she was by going back to school for over 2 years just to prepare to get into a dental school, she was passed over the first round, it took other candidates picking other schools before she got picked in the second round. (I don't know how she made it through that time)
If you want lower dental costs, build more dental schools to provide more graduating dentists and lower the cost of dental school. Just my two cents.
* Higher Tax Bracket, Husband also earns a good income.
PS I was lucky for years, I had an older dentist that didn't keep up with prices. When he got ill he sold the practice, there was an immediate 30% across the board increase in prices.