Garage & Basement Dentist - Good or Bad?

www.wmur.com...

Police in Florida say an illegal dental office being run out of the garage of a house has been shut down.

I've seen a couple of stories the last few days about people running illegal dental operations in their garages and basements.
What is weird is that these people have been doing it for five years! This is not a fly by night type of operation. These people did everything, from
braces, to crowns to cleanings. I wonder if the dentist is actually a real dentist but just licensed from another country.

Don't get me wrong, they were wrong and not paying taxes and may or may not have been following safe procedures. What is known is that they must have been somewhat good at it to be in business for five years. On another article I read people were trying to pay for their release and wanted to see them for dental work after they got out.

Maybe dental care is just too darn expensive. Just like medical, when did we allow it to get this way? You know when places start forming underground something is off.

a reply to: JAGStorm

GOOD....

That is my very detailed response on this matter.

I truly hope that I have provided some great insight into this subject.

a reply to: JAGStorm

Obviously, as soon as dental insurance and government provided dental assistance became a thing...the costs went up. It is the nature of the beast.

Ain't no way would I ever go to a garage/basement dentist.

LOL

Good Grief.

a reply to: JAGStorm

You oughta see what goes on in Dearborn basements! In my rig...I see it all...

Some immigrants, refugees etc...have their own ways and people.....surgeries in homes too...

I'm always stunned!

EMT/ERT
1st Responder

Back when I lived in Vegas... 08-2010... there was a story about a couple running a medical office out of a back room in a flooring store I believe.

Surgical procedures. A client died, they dumped the body on the street and were arrested at the airport trying to flee the country.

Not sure what things like dental cost these days. I have pretty good insurance but rarely use it... But any backroom medical procedure is not good.

a reply to: JAGStorm

Basement dentists are just fine.

Yea seems a bit to sketchy for me. Go in for an extraction and wake up missing a kidney.
I’ll pass.

a reply to: neo96

a reply to: Athetos

Infection would be my biggest concern.

Tool sterilisation.

Too many things can go wrong.

I mean the people who do this are definitely breaking laws and should be held accountable... but what about the system that lead citizens to actually pursue treatment like such? Is there a realistic way to tackle the real issue of the health industry?

FYI I've never had any serious dental issues and only have regular checkups... so in my case I would totally check out an underground dentist just for the heck of it.

originally posted by: mysterioustranger
a reply to: JAGStorm

You oughta see what goes on in Dearborn basements! In my rig...I see it all...

Some immigrants, refugees etc...have their own ways and people.....surgeries in homes too...

I'm always stunned!

EMT/ERT
1st Responder

You should totally start a thread on what you have seen, that would be such an interesting thread!!!

originally posted by: Athetos
Yea seems a bit to sketchy for me. Go in for an extraction and wake up missing a kidney.
I’ll pass.

a reply to: neo96

Maybe in some places, but keep in mind this place was there for 5 years and seemed to have a lot of happy garage dental clients!!!

If it is qualified dentist and ‘garage’ is actually done up to be a surgery and sterile I see no problem.

Well, I see many problems but I’d use them.

Dentist is overrated. I go every 15 years. Never had a problem or filling. They hate me I’m smug.

a reply to: mysterioustranger

Here is the story from the basement one!

www.freep.com...

It actually looks like a legit setup.

I'm lucky, I have very good dental insurance, so I don't have to worry about these things, but I wonder about people that don't. I don't think it is really poor people because they are probably covered, so these people must be serving the working poor and lower middle class.

a reply to: JAGStorm

i would have to say this is a very bad thing. dentistry like any health service is regulated, and licenced for a reason. it is to at least try to make sure said practitioner is competent in their field. so they will be far less likely to do harm. seriously would you go to some guy's garage to have an appendix removed (unless of course you knew he was a certified doctor, and you would die if he didn't do it right then)? or to have a heart bypass done? dentistry is no different, and the consequences of mistakes can be equally deadly.

i'm sure we all know dentistry, thanks to so many people having insurance (PS not covered under socialized medicine in countries like Canada), has driven the price, just like for all medical care through the roof. seriously over 25 years ago i had to pay between $400 and $500, just to get a tooth pulled in Canada, since i didn't have private health insurance at the time. that is insane. just a couple or so years back in another country, using pretty much the exact same tools, equipment, medication and technique, i had to have a tooth pulled. and there it only cost about $5. how can you even begin to explain why there is such a difference in price? especially when the far, far more expensive one was done so long before, seriously the price is likely even higher now.

and this is exactly why Trump was right in the State of the Union address, that they need to work to CUT COSTS of medical care, which is the real problem of why people can not afford medical care, or medical insurance. and that high cost of said medical care is directly the fault of medical insurance, and socialized medical care.

Back in the mid seventies I broke a tooth and my wife's grandpa knew an old retired dentist who had an office in his home. He was about seventy and still worked on some of his lifelong clients in retirement. He said it needed to either needed a root canal and crown at two hundred bucks or he would pull it for ten bucks. I chose the ten bucks.

Well, he asked if I needed novacane, I told him I could tolerate pain, he said that was good, that stuff is not good for you anyway. So he grabbed his pliers and tried to pull, he was actually strong for a seventy year old guy, he was shaking so he put his knee up on my chest and pulled the whole top of the tooth off...he said oops. So he said no worry, he has to split the root, it was wrapped into the jaw. So he took a chissel and hammer and split the root into four. then he grabbed each of the four sections out with the pliers and his foot on my chest. I was satisfied, he packed it and I took off. I wound up in the hospital three hours later, a vein burst there and he had to come and sew the hole shut, the nurse said it is probably not as bad as I think at the desk, so I opened my mouth and it squirted out onto her paper over the counter and she then saw it was serious. It took the dentist about twenty minutes to get there, and of course I lost another cup or so of blood by then. He patched it up and I asked him how much I owe him, he said don't worry, things like that happen. My insurance covered the hospital charge, the emergency room was almost forty bucks those days including the doctor. I went to sleep for about twenty four hours after that, they could not wake me up and I came downstairs and they were discussing calling an ambulance. I just went into a little short coma when my blood got low, no problem, I felt great when I did get up.

Dentists have got expensive these days and they seem to push lots of cosmetic stuff instead of just fixing the teeth. Acid does free mercury from the silver fillings too, and that mercury is bioactive. Even dentures contain mercury in them, so did some of the ceramic fillings they used to use. but the old ceramic fillings were recalled silently, dentists got paid for removing them but charged the insurance companies most times plus collected from the recall. I knew a dentist who told me about that. He had pulled and replaced every one of my ceramic fillings he had put in and I asked why, replacing them with the mercury and silver ones again. At the time I did not care, there was no deductible, he got the deductible from the recall, we had dental insurance at the time. There was only three fillings he had to replace.

a reply to: JAGStorm


First they came for the basement tooth pulling and no one stood up for me. Next they came for the basement corpse dismembering and no one stood up for me. Then they came for you but I couldn't stand up for you since I was doing seven consecutive life sentences in a supermax.

a reply to: rickymouse

so I opened my mouth and it squirted out onto her paper over the counter and she then saw it was serious.

The imagery right there.............yikes!
What a story!

originally posted by: JAGStorm
a reply to: rickymouse

so I opened my mouth and it squirted out onto her paper over the counter and she then saw it was serious.

The imagery right there.............yikes!
What a story!

Forty years I have been telling that story. I wonder if that nurse is still alive, she must be in her late seventies now if she is. These days they would probably call it assault because of AIDS being so prevalent, back those days there was no aids around at all.

originally posted by: JAGStorm
www.wmur.com...

Police in Florida say an illegal dental office being run out of the garage of a house has been shut down.

I've seen a couple of stories the last few days about people running illegal dental operations in their garages and basements.
What is weird is that these people have been doing it for five years! This is not a fly by night type of operation. These people did everything, from
braces, to crowns to cleanings. I wonder if the dentist is actually a real dentist but just licensed from another country.

Don't get me wrong, they were wrong and not paying taxes and may or may not have been following safe procedures. What is known is that they must have been somewhat good at it to be in business for five years. On another article I read people were trying to pay for their release and wanted to see them for dental work after they got out.

Maybe dental care is just too darn expensive. Just like medical, when did we allow it to get this way? You know when places start forming underground something is off.

I think my dentist charged like $175 for a dental cleaning which is done by a tech, not the actual Dentist.

95% of medical stuff could probably be done cheaper and by non-doctors. The problem is that you have liability and standards that should be adhered to... most people don't want a "buyer beware" situation when it comes to their medical treatment.

People used to take their teeth out with pliers or tying a string to a door knob.