Speaker 1: I'm Noah. This is Devin in today's episode. A question
Speaker 1: that nags at me every time I sit in one
Speaker 1: of their chairs. Our dentists scamming us. We dig into
Speaker 1: the dental industry surprisingly dark history.
Speaker 2: A lot of the replacement teeth were from corpses.
Speaker 1: We hear from someone who uncovered a dentist drilling healthy
Speaker 1: teeth for profit.
Speaker 3: How did I let this happen to me? Twenty eight
Speaker 3: rout canals.
Speaker 1: I must be stupid, and I talk with a startup
Speaker 1: founder who's trying to blow up the entire industry.
Speaker 4: Going to the dentist is one of the biggest scams
Speaker 4: of our modern time.
Speaker 5: I know there's no no touch thing, no touch, Thank touch,
Speaker 5: thank touch, thank touch, thank.
Speaker 1: All right, So in the studio today, we're joined by
Speaker 1: a friend of the pod, a licensed therapist and a
Speaker 1: writer of the Reality Test newsletter, Lily Caplin.
Speaker 6: Hi, guys, going, I'm so happy to be back.
Speaker 1: You may remember Lily from the Do I Need Therapy? Episode?
Speaker 1: So we're glad to have you back for a discussion.
Speaker 1: Has nothing to do with therapy. I love that, but really, actually,
Speaker 1: specifically if we wanted you on this episode because at
Speaker 1: many and me as baby shower. A few weeks ago,
Speaker 1: at the after afters UH, we were all gathered around
Speaker 1: the table and I was complaining about dentists in Sea, saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: I think they're trying to scam me. I think dentist
Speaker 1: or scammers. We had some other people in the group saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: dentist are scamming us. And we had one dentist defender
Speaker 1: at the table. We had one person who said, guys,
Speaker 1: they're doing what they think is best. They care about
Speaker 1: your oral care. They're trying to prevent things from getting worse.
Speaker 1: And that was you, Lily. You were you were defending
Speaker 1: the dentists, which was which was I thought an interesting
Speaker 1: take to have, because like brave, dentists have, as we'll
Speaker 1: talk about in this episode, a pretty negative reputation. But
Speaker 1: you you came in there, you know, supporting them and
Speaker 1: speaking up for them, get to the voiceless exactly.
Speaker 6: So I think that my take on dentistry is a
Speaker 6: bit of a defense, a bit of a yo yo
Speaker 6: from where I used to sit. So I've struggled with
Speaker 6: a bit more than a bit of what one might
Speaker 6: call dentophobia throughout my life. So I've been super, super
Speaker 6: super avoidant of dentists, which has caused some problems for
Speaker 6: my teeth, and I had to get like a whole
Speaker 6: bunch of work done on my mouth, which was pretty
Speaker 6: painful and terrible, and I had to really overcome my
Speaker 6: fear of dentists and going to the dentist. I find
Speaker 6: it a very vulnerable experience to go to the dentist.
Speaker 6: And yeah, so I think coming off of that, like
Speaker 6: I was not, especially that night and probably still, I'm
Speaker 6: not emotionally prepared to have the view that dentistry is
Speaker 6: a scam because I was so far in the other
Speaker 6: direction of like, I will not go to the dentist.
Speaker 6: I cannot go to the dentist. I can't handle the dentist.
Speaker 6: That the dentist did become truly necessary. And now I
Speaker 6: would say I am of the mind that like, you
Speaker 6: should go so that you don't end up like me.
Speaker 1: Ago, Yeah, no, talk us through. What What are your
Speaker 1: dentist interactions been like over the years.
Speaker 7: Over the past few years? None, Okay, I'm going, I'm booked.
Speaker 7: I'm booked to go soon. Long wait list, yes, which
Speaker 7: which that was news to me because in the past
Speaker 7: I've been able to hop right over there.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so I didn't have any trauma with I never
Speaker 7: minded going, but I never It was just more of
Speaker 7: an inconvenient thing to do. But I did feel like
Speaker 7: my teeth were cleaner after.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So basically you're going for questions not regularly as we're.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we're hearing it's more laziness than, you know, than
Speaker 7: like a mistrust distrust.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the reason we're doing this episode is because
Speaker 1: of my experience with the dentists. For most of my
Speaker 1: life up to up into high school, I had pretty
Speaker 1: limited interactions with this. Never had cavities besides when I
Speaker 1: was like a kid, so I was just going for
Speaker 1: cleanings until my senior year of high school. Well, we're
Speaker 1: transport ourselves to the bowling alley in New Jersey where
Speaker 1: it's the final frame. It's me and my friends. We're
Speaker 1: going head to head and I am tied for last place.
Speaker 1: And if you're a bowling head, you know the one
Speaker 1: rule of bowling with your friends is you don't want
Speaker 1: to come in less. So I just need to hit
Speaker 1: one to not come in last. So I said, okay,
Speaker 1: I just don't just don't get a gutter ball. That's
Speaker 1: pretty easy. I don't know why. In my mind, you know,
Speaker 1: I think I want to be a little bit of
Speaker 1: a jokester too, So I was like, let me let
Speaker 1: me granny bullet. So are you familiar with brainy bowling?
Speaker 6: Is that where you do it between your legs?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 1: Yes, you put two hands on the ball, you sort
Speaker 1: of get your legs nice and wide, and you sort
Speaker 1: of pull it the ball between your legs and then
Speaker 1: push it out. So I did that and I slipped
Speaker 1: fell on my face because my hands were up. Remember
Speaker 1: when you rainy bowl your your hands are going sure,
Speaker 1: so they're above my head and chipped three or four
Speaker 1: of my teeth like on a on a diagonal. And
Speaker 1: I know it sounds horrific. It did not hurt at all.
Speaker 1: I knew immediately that my teeth came out because I
Speaker 1: could feel there was a gap. But I wasn't bleeding
Speaker 1: and there was no pain. And the worst part is
Speaker 1: I went over the line. Yeah I was gonna ask
Speaker 1: about that. So it didn't even count.
Speaker 7: So lost you lost more than your four teeth?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Little did I know the trajectory of that would
Speaker 1: put me on because replacing teeth is very, very expensive,
Speaker 1: So even with insurance at the time, I ended up
Speaker 1: having to spend like three or four grand out of
Speaker 1: pocket for it. And the thing that people don't think
Speaker 1: about when you get dental work is that it's not
Speaker 1: a one and done. If you get teeth replaced, you
Speaker 1: have to get those teef replaced if you get it
Speaker 1: done right, like every ten years or so. So and
Speaker 1: you're paying thousands of dollars every ten years or so
Speaker 1: to get those teeth replaced. So I've gone in to
Speaker 1: just replace the crown. But my dentist has been really
Speaker 1: really trying to get me to replace all of my
Speaker 1: fake teeth because she's like, I just want to do
Speaker 1: them all, make it all. Look, you know, the color
Speaker 1: will match better. I can make the match better. And
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, theoretically that sounds fun. Like let's
Speaker 1: find out how much is that gonna cost. She's like, okay,
Speaker 1: they run through the insurance, they get anstipate. It's like
Speaker 1: seven or eight grand. Okay, now let's just do the one.
Speaker 7: They don't have like a bundle deal.
Speaker 1: That's what I was thinking.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I was like, you know, they're already all the
Speaker 7: tools are out already.
Speaker 1: Better if it's only gonna be slightly more expensive, you know,
Speaker 1: like why not do it?
Speaker 7: But then they're all on the same timeline.
Speaker 1: Exactly, So I told them, Now then you know, they're
Speaker 1: trying to convince me you can do a payment. I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't care if it's paying it right
Speaker 1: now or over a year. I don't want to pay
Speaker 1: seminar eight grand on teeth just for fun. Yeah exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Later it's like I'm still paying, so no, thank you.
Speaker 1: So they, you know, they seem to get the message.
Speaker 1: I come back. And the thing, when you're getting teeth
Speaker 1: for place, you have to as you know, when you're
Speaker 1: getting work done, you have to go in multiple times.
Speaker 1: So I had to go in like three or four
Speaker 1: times for this crown, and every time I would go in,
Speaker 1: it was as if I had not had that conversation
Speaker 1: with them that they were only doing the one tooth.
Speaker 1: So they would down to the last time I was
Speaker 1: going in to get my permanent in. The dentist was like, okay,
Speaker 1: so this is going to take a bit longer because
Speaker 1: we're doing you know, all these teeth, and I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we're not. So it just felt and I had liked.
Speaker 1: I've been going to this dentist for like two or
Speaker 1: three years now. I'd liked that dentist up to this point,
Speaker 1: but it just to me felt very scammy in a
Speaker 1: way of that, like I've been very clear if you that,
Speaker 1: and I was I was pulling that I can't afford it,
Speaker 1: you know. I was like, that's going to shut it down,
Speaker 1: Like you know, you could say whatever you want about
Speaker 1: like the cosmetics of it. I was like, I can't
Speaker 1: afford this right now. I just cannot afford to do it.
Speaker 1: And the fact that they were still bringing it up
Speaker 1: every single time, I was like, something's going on here.
Speaker 1: And I have talked to other people who have been like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been going to the Dunets for years. It's been fine.
Speaker 1: I go to this random dudist. He says, I have
Speaker 1: all these cavities, So I had to get all these
Speaker 1: cavities filled. So I guess with this episode, what I
Speaker 1: wanted to look into is is there a dental standard?
Speaker 1: What are dentists actually doing when they're in your mouth? Right?
Speaker 1: How do they determine you need a cavity field? Right?
Speaker 1: Is there some sort of standard or are they just freestyling.
Speaker 1: And then I also want to deal with this idea
Speaker 1: of dental insurance and why, with all these experiences that
Speaker 1: I've had, I've always had dental insurance, and I'm still
Speaker 1: paying thousands of dollars out of pocket. Why doesn't dental
Speaker 1: insurance cover more of my oral care? So we're going
Speaker 1: to take a break. I'm gonna get back and walk
Speaker 1: you through my deep dive into the world of dentistry.
Speaker 1: We'll hear about its history. I'll talk to a dentist
Speaker 1: who found out a colleague was giving his patients unnecessary
Speaker 1: root canales, and a chat with a guy who says
Speaker 1: his startup will blow up the industry. All that. After
Speaker 1: the break. All right, we're back. We have a lot
Speaker 1: to get into in this episode. But first I wanted
Speaker 1: to try to learn how the hell we got here,
Speaker 1: so I called up journalists AJ Jacobs for a history lesson.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 2: I like the premise because, for instance, I went to
Speaker 2: the dentists and they told me I had to get
Speaker 2: my tooth out, Like, how am I supposed to know
Speaker 2: whether that's true?
Speaker 1: Yes, So AJ used to write this column for this
Speaker 1: magazine called Mental Flaws.
Speaker 2: And the column was called the Bad Old Days, because
Speaker 2: the premise was that the good old days were not good.
Speaker 2: They were terrible. They were dangerous, they were racist, sexist, smelly,
Speaker 2: they were just horrible, painful.
Speaker 1: In every month he would cover a new topic. In
Speaker 1: one of his most memorial months was when he covered dentistry.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't like going to the dentist, but
Speaker 2: I certainly don't like reading about the history of dentistry
Speaker 2: because it is just horrible.
Speaker 1: So let's say it's a seventeenth century you're having an
Speaker 1: issue with one of your teeth. AJ said, you would
Speaker 1: typically go to a barber surgeon.
Speaker 2: Which was a combination of a barber and a surgeon,
Speaker 2: and dentistry was often lumped in with surgery because you're
Speaker 2: taking stuff out of the body that was basically surgery.
Speaker 1: And an important thing to note is that during his
Speaker 1: time period, doctors did not perform surgery, So the church
Speaker 1: viewed surgery is being unclean because you were touching bodily fluids.
Speaker 1: So barber surgeons were seen as being more similar to
Speaker 1: something like a blacksmith. So back to our roleplay. If
Speaker 1: you have a toothake naved rip your tooth out basically
Speaker 1: with no anaesetic at all.
Speaker 2: Or maybe they'd give you some whiskey.
Speaker 1: Or something even weirder.
Speaker 2: For some reason, in the seventeenth eighteenth century, medical practitioners
Speaker 2: were obsessed with enemas. There's not a huge overlap between
Speaker 2: your teeth and your butt, but they just were like,
Speaker 2: let's shoot things off the butt and see if that
Speaker 2: helps the teeth.
Speaker 1: So barber surgeons were basically your best case scenario back then,
Speaker 1: because there were also some straight up grifters.
Speaker 2: There was this crazy genre of traveling dentists and they
Speaker 2: were called toothpolers, and they were sort of like quack medicine,
Speaker 2: and they would put on a show.
Speaker 1: So they'd come to your town with music, they'd draw
Speaker 1: a huge crowd and then they'd pull out your teeth.
Speaker 2: And they would first bring up a shill, someone who
Speaker 2: was on their team and who had a fake tooth
Speaker 2: that they would pull out. But then people would volunteer
Speaker 2: and pay whatever it was fifty cents and go, and
Speaker 2: then they would pull out the.
Speaker 1: Teeth, and these drifters would signal for the band to
Speaker 1: play louder to drown out patient screams.
Speaker 2: And it was a spectacle, you know, people, he really
Speaker 2: came to watch it. People watched it. It was like
Speaker 2: people loved executions. People back then, I mean sometimes now
Speaker 2: are sadistic, voyeuristic, horrible people.
Speaker 1: And there are some crazy stories about how these traveling
Speaker 1: dentists try to one up one another.
Speaker 2: One of the famous examples is that they would attach
Speaker 2: a string to the tooth and then the dentist would
Speaker 2: get on a horse and kick the horse to go
Speaker 2: in an opposite direction, and that's how they pulled the
Speaker 2: tooth out. Now, there is some evidence that was an
Speaker 2: apocryphal and nyvy didn't happen a lot or even ever,
Speaker 2: but that was the shot.
Speaker 1: And the dentists would use these shows to sell.
Speaker 2: The snake oil tooth ointments that were supposed to help.
Speaker 1: Aj also told me about the dark history of dentures.
Speaker 2: A lot of the replacement teeth were from corpses. So
Speaker 2: in the nineteenth century there was something called Waterloo teeth,
Speaker 2: and it was from the dead soldiers on the Waterloo
Speaker 2: Battlefield and other battles. Scavengers would go and they would
Speaker 2: take out the teeth and then dentists would put them in.
Speaker 1: Growing up, you may have heard about George Washington having
Speaker 1: false teeth.
Speaker 2: The rumor is that it was wood, but that's not true.
Speaker 2: Truth is much more disturbing that it was a combination
Speaker 2: of things. It was partly animal ivory from elephants and hippopotamus,
Speaker 2: but partly from enslaved people human teeth.
Speaker 1: Aj says the transition from the quack based dentistry of
Speaker 1: the past to the science back dentistry of today didn't
Speaker 1: happen overnight, but there were incremental steps.
Speaker 2: There were a few landmarks that really helped. One was
Speaker 2: the invention of nitrous oxide, which was very helpful because
Speaker 2: before you were just getting your teeth pulled with no anesthesia,
Speaker 2: maybe a little whiskey.
Speaker 1: And the germ theory was also another huge step forward.
Speaker 2: Back before the germ theory, these dentists would go in
Speaker 2: with their dirty hands and they would cause more infections
Speaker 2: than if they just left it b So it was
Speaker 2: a gradual thing, learning about germs, learning about pain management.
Speaker 1: And also the idea of prevention became a lot more popularized.
Speaker 2: The idea of brushing your teeth and even flossing.
Speaker 1: AJA also took a look at how culturally we viewed
Speaker 1: dentists over the years.
Speaker 2: If you google historical dentist illustrations you'll see, you know,
Speaker 2: they look like these distic monsters pulling teeth out, And
Speaker 2: I think that that reputation has continued. Like in pop culture,
Speaker 2: there's Marathon Man, who is this sadistic Nazi dentist.
Speaker 8: A life, freshly cut nerve is infinitely more sensitive.
Speaker 5: So I'll just go into a healthy tooth until I
Speaker 5: reached the pose.
Speaker 2: There's Steve Martin who was in the Little Shop of
Speaker 2: Horrors and like that song, He's got an entire song
Speaker 2: about how much he loves inflicting pain on other people.
Speaker 3: Peteple will pay you.
Speaker 9: To be in humane.
Speaker 2: There's a line in when Harry met Sally when Meg
Speaker 2: Ryan says that her boyfriend's name is Sheldon, and Billy
Speaker 2: Crystal's like, well, he's not going to be a good lover.
Speaker 1: No, No, you did not have great sets with Sheldon.
Speaker 1: I did too, No, you did. Sheldon can do your
Speaker 1: income taxes if you need a root canal, Sheldon shumans,
Speaker 1: But humping and pumping is not sheldon strong suit.
Speaker 2: So the poor dentists get beat up on a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and some of them I'm sure deserve it, because some
Speaker 2: I'm sure are still quacks and doing things they shouldn't,
Speaker 2: but I do believe a lot of them are out
Speaker 2: to make us healthier and make our teeth less painful.
Speaker 1: So that is the history of dentistry. Fast forward to today.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I am someone who has spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time going to the dentists over the last
Speaker 1: couple of years. And one of my biggest issues with
Speaker 1: the dentists is that it is so damn expensive. Right, So,
Speaker 1: a new study found that nearly one in three young
Speaker 1: adults have skipped it dentist in the past year because
Speaker 1: of cost. And one of the most frustrating things for
Speaker 1: me about dental care is that it is so expensive
Speaker 1: even if you have insurance. So I want to find
Speaker 1: out why the hell dental insurance does not cover more.
Speaker 1: So I call up somebody who cares about this a lot.
Speaker 9: I'm Sarah Stufan. I'm a general dentist in Iowa.
Speaker 1: So doctor Sarah is also a dental insurance expert and
Speaker 1: a spokesperson for the American Dental Association otherwise known as
Speaker 1: the ADA. She says, I am not alone in being
Speaker 1: confused by how little dental insurance actually covers.
Speaker 9: When we talk about patient satisfaction, and we talk about
Speaker 9: frustration and cost of care. This hits the nail on
Speaker 9: the head of what I hear from my patients is
Speaker 9: that they have some sort of dental benefit and they
Speaker 9: have expectations of what it's going to do for them,
Speaker 9: and then it turns out it's not not meeting those expectations.
Speaker 9: What we've seen with dental insurance over the past twenty
Speaker 9: years is that, you know, dental insurance has an annual maximum,
Speaker 9: and those maximums haven't changed.
Speaker 1: So to break this down, most dental plans have what's
Speaker 1: called an annual maximum, which is the maximum amount the
Speaker 1: insurance company will pay towards any care for the year.
Speaker 1: Over the last twenty years, that number hasn't really changed.
Speaker 1: And that's despite rising healthcare costs and inflation. So the
Speaker 1: value of your dental insurance, say twenty years ago, is
Speaker 1: not the same as it is today. Another way of
Speaker 1: thinking about this is if I gave you one hundred
Speaker 1: bucks to go to a grocery store in two thousand
Speaker 1: and six, how much would that get you versus one
Speaker 1: hundred dollars at the grocery store in twenty six.
Speaker 9: And that's frustrating because the idea and the expectation behind
Speaker 9: dental insurance is similar to most people base their experiences
Speaker 9: off of medical.
Speaker 1: But it turns out tental insurance is nothing like medical insurance.
Speaker 9: Dental insurance I think of more like a coupon. So right,
Speaker 9: and there's normally, you know, in the bottom of that
Speaker 9: cupon there was a bunch of uh, there's a bunch
Speaker 9: of asterisks like limitations and waiting periods and all these things.
Speaker 9: So when you get to the checkout, you find out
Speaker 9: that coupon isn't as great as you thought it was
Speaker 9: going to be.
Speaker 6: I mean, all this work that I spoke about, my
Speaker 6: insurance covered like zero of it, Like it was thousands
Speaker 6: and thousands of dollars, which I mean, just hearing that
Speaker 6: just honestly made me feel tired.
Speaker 5: No, it just sucks.
Speaker 6: It makes me really angry. Yeah, it's like it's such
Speaker 6: a it's a it's a promise like insurance insurance. The
Speaker 6: word insurance is a promise that you will be insured
Speaker 6: against something bad happening. But if something actually bad happens,
Speaker 6: like your dental insurance covers like what one two cleanings
Speaker 6: a year, it doesn't ensure you if something bad happens
Speaker 6: that happens, you're paying for it.
Speaker 1: Doctor Sarah says the ada's ideal dental plan has no
Speaker 1: annual maximum because.
Speaker 9: If you have some sort of problem that's beyond you know,
Speaker 9: say that one crown or that one crown or root canal,
Speaker 9: is it right for a patient to say, Okay, I'm
Speaker 9: going to wait on that until next year.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 9: When we're talking about health, this is this is health.
Speaker 9: Somehow we've disconnected the mouth from the rest of the body,
Speaker 9: but healthy mouth is part of a healthy body.
Speaker 1: So the ADA is working on insurance reforms at both
Speaker 1: the state and federal level.
Speaker 9: And one of the big things when you talk about
Speaker 9: value for care is called dental loss ratio, which is
Speaker 9: basically the amount of your premium dollars that actually get
Speaker 9: spent towards care versus administration of the plan and things
Speaker 9: like that, and that already exists on the full side.
Speaker 1: Under the Affordable Care Act, medical insurance companies have to
Speaker 1: spend between eighty and eighty five percent of premium dollars
Speaker 1: on your actual care. Where there's no federal regulation on
Speaker 1: dental insurance. So I was actually able to find one
Speaker 1: insurance company in West Virginia who had a dentist loss
Speaker 1: ratio as low as thirty six percent.
Speaker 9: So some plans are putting a very low percentage of
Speaker 9: what you're paying for a premium actually into your care.
Speaker 1: So where's most of that money, like you're saying, is
Speaker 1: going well towards administrative cost and just profit.
Speaker 9: Right, we think it's important that patients their actual their
Speaker 9: premium dollars are going towards care rights. And that's the
Speaker 9: expectation for our patients, is that it's going towards care.
Speaker 7: It is like, this is exactly what people fear, is
Speaker 7: what's happening. Yeah, yeah, and it's right right under our eyes.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, I can't say I'm surprised. Yeah, it
Speaker 6: is an expectation that I would like to have, but
Speaker 6: it's not an expectation that I've had for any kind
Speaker 6: of insurance on it.
Speaker 1: All, Right, So that's the insurance portion of this, And
Speaker 1: insurance is going to be a reoccurring thing that comes
Speaker 1: up in this conversation, so just keep that in the
Speaker 1: back of your mind. But let's talk about care. Right.
Speaker 1: So I've been going to the dentist for over thirty
Speaker 1: years now. I'm still not quite sure what they're doing
Speaker 1: in my mouth, So I called up doctor Sharlyn Pizzulo.
Speaker 10: I am a general dentist and a clinical associate professor
Speaker 10: at NYU Dental School.
Speaker 1: So the recommendation is that you go to the dentist
Speaker 1: twice a year for checkups and cleanings, and at one
Speaker 1: of those checkups they're usually going to do some X rays.
Speaker 10: So then when we look at those, we look at
Speaker 10: a couple of things. I'm looking at kind of like
Speaker 10: if I see any infection in the roots of your teeth.
Speaker 1: Which might indicate you need a root canal.
Speaker 10: I'm looking at old fellings that you've had or crowned
Speaker 10: or things like that, to see how they're looking that
Speaker 10: there's nothing compromising them.
Speaker 1: They're checking bone levels to make sure that your teeth
Speaker 1: have a good foundation, and they're also checking for cavities.
Speaker 10: We could see the different layers of your teeth, so
Speaker 10: there's enamel, there's dentin. If I see those shadows going
Speaker 10: past that first layer, that enamel layer, then definitely I'm
Speaker 10: recommending that we do a filling.
Speaker 1: Doctor Shearlyn says, this is where things can get tricky.
Speaker 10: Sometimes you might get recommended to get more fillings and
Speaker 10: you're used and you're like what is happening here? Depending
Speaker 10: on that dentist practice or beliefs, they might do fillings
Speaker 10: on enamel lesions is what they're called, like enamel cavities,
Speaker 10: like these little shadows that only are in the first
Speaker 10: layer because they argue like, oh, we should just get
Speaker 10: rid of it now so it doesn't get any bigger.
Speaker 1: But research shows that these early stage cavities can actually
Speaker 1: be reversed if you take proper care of your teeth
Speaker 1: and use things like fluoride.
Speaker 10: So I'm a pretty conservative dentist in that way where
Speaker 10: I don't like to drill a person's tooth unless it's
Speaker 10: really really necessary.
Speaker 1: So is there no standard in terms of like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's get all the dentists together and say we are
Speaker 1: not going to fill someone's cavities unless they do X.
Speaker 1: It seems like there's a lot of like personal discretion.
Speaker 1: There is.
Speaker 10: There is a standard, and that we teach in dental school,
Speaker 10: because I teach in a dental school where we teach
Speaker 10: our students is fundamentally that if it is again like
Speaker 10: I said, if the cavity has progressed past that first layer,
Speaker 10: that enamel layer of your tooth, once it's gotten to
Speaker 10: the dentin, which is the second layer of your tooth.
Speaker 10: Then you really need to you need to do something
Speaker 10: to get in there, take out the decay and fill
Speaker 10: it up with the like kind of seal it so
Speaker 10: that you know it doesn't progress, because once it gets
Speaker 10: that layer, it not only moves quicker, but it really
Speaker 10: can't be reversed. And you know, once you get past
Speaker 10: that layer, you're getting into the nerves of your tooth,
Speaker 10: which is where like rue canal, that discussion comes up.
Speaker 10: I've seen patients firsthand, though, be able to reverse cavities
Speaker 10: in the first layer of the tooth.
Speaker 1: She says she could understand an argument for drilling this
Speaker 1: early if a patient just refuses to take care of
Speaker 1: their teeth.
Speaker 9: Some patients will.
Speaker 10: Tell me like, I'm not going to do it, dog
Speaker 10: like straight up, like I don't care. I got a
Speaker 10: lot going on. I only brush once a day. If
Speaker 10: that so, then I'd be like, all right, maybe then
Speaker 10: we should do this.
Speaker 1: Right, But she says even in those cases, it's a
Speaker 1: discussion and she's not just drilling just because. But not
Speaker 1: all dentists follow that logic.
Speaker 10: I actually recall before I was a dentist, I was
Speaker 10: like you know, in college or something, and I went
Speaker 10: and I had never had cavities my whole life. I
Speaker 10: was really good about it. I always knew I wanted
Speaker 10: to be a dentist since I was like fourteen, So
Speaker 10: I was that girl. So I went to a new
Speaker 10: dentist and they told me I had like four cavities,
Speaker 10: and I literally cried in the chair. I was like, no,
Speaker 10: this can't be, Like, I know, how has this happened?
Speaker 10: And now that I look at my X rays, I
Speaker 10: don't think I really needed those. I think they are
Speaker 10: very tiny. I think they could have been reversed. But
Speaker 10: you know, I guess that dentist for whatever reason, and
Speaker 10: I'm not going to, like, you know, bash him. But
Speaker 10: some people do over treatment plan for various reasons. I
Speaker 10: hope that a lot of them are because they really
Speaker 10: feel like it's the right thing to do. But I
Speaker 10: am sure, and I do know that a lot of
Speaker 10: people do it for you know, insurance purposes and being
Speaker 10: able to collect. You know, it is a business at
Speaker 10: the end of the day with for a lot of people.
Speaker 10: I don't know my own practice, so I have a
Speaker 10: completely different mindset in that way. But unfortunately, some people
Speaker 10: do get they change over the years when they're trying
Speaker 10: to you know, build their practice. They have employees, they
Speaker 10: have a family, so there's usually good reason, but still
Speaker 10: at the expense sometimes of maybe what is the ultimate
Speaker 10: best thing for the patient.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: I was kind of shocked. Doctor Sherylyn was just outright like, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are some dentists who were just failing cavities for fun, essentially,
Speaker 1: not for fun, but because they want the insurance money.
Speaker 1: So I did I ask bec or Sarah about this.
Speaker 1: You know, she's like, you're a round table. Now she's
Speaker 1: a spokesperson for the ADA. This is a pretty big accuation.
Speaker 1: I didn't just want to take one word for it.
Speaker 1: So here's what she had to say.
Speaker 9: I think in any profession, there's probably going to be
Speaker 9: a few bad apples, right. I personally feel that dentists
Speaker 9: generally are wanting to do what's best for their patients.
Speaker 1: So I started looking around because I wanted to see
Speaker 1: just how often dentists are ripping off their patients. Unsurprisingly,
Speaker 1: I couldn't find any hard data, but I did come
Speaker 1: across some antidotes like this journalists in nineteen ninety seven
Speaker 1: for Readers Digests, he sent his X rays to fifty
Speaker 1: different dentists. The journalists had already known that he needed
Speaker 1: maybe two crowns that would cost him up to fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred dollars, but the estimates that he got were all
Speaker 1: over the place. Six dentists said he needed at least
Speaker 1: eleven crowns, and four dentists said he needed at least
Speaker 1: twenty one crowns, which would cost him up to thirty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. And more recently, it came across an article
Speaker 1: from the Atlantic from twenty nineteen in which journalist Farris
Speaker 1: Jabber questions just how scientific dentistry really is. He lays
Speaker 1: out the case that dentistry has created quote both the
Speaker 1: opportunity and motive for widespread over treatment. Here's Ferris on
Speaker 1: the podcast in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 11: Most doctors will end up working for a large healthcare
Speaker 11: organization or a hospital with quite a bit of oversight,
Speaker 11: But the vast majority of dentists in the US open
Speaker 11: up their own practices, so they mostly answer to themselves.
Speaker 11: There are ethical guidelines and codes that they're supposed to follow,
Speaker 11: but there isn't somebody looking over their shoulder day to day.
Speaker 1: I emailed in DMS Faris multiple times to interview him
Speaker 1: for this episode, but he didn't get back to me.
Speaker 1: But I was able to chat with someone at the
Speaker 1: heart of Ferris' reporting.
Speaker 3: The journalist, you know, Ferris Jabberer. I don't know how
Speaker 3: you say his last name, but I don't subscribe to
Speaker 3: anything to his opinion of dentistry or dentist in general.
Speaker 1: That is doctor Brandon Ziedler, who is a dentist in California.
Speaker 1: And no, he is not the fat guy in his story.
Speaker 1: Let's rewind a bit to the twenty ten killed Osama
Speaker 1: bin Laden.
Speaker 3: At the time, I was much younger, you know. I
Speaker 3: was working maybe three days a week and I was
Speaker 3: looking to work five.
Speaker 1: So doctor Brandon was looking to take over another practice,
Speaker 1: the mayor.
Speaker 3: You can't just put up a Sinus's dentist and expect
Speaker 3: people to walk through the door. You kind of have
Speaker 3: to take over someone that was retiring.
Speaker 1: So a broker he had worked with before put him
Speaker 1: in touch with doctor Luhn, who was looking for someone
Speaker 1: to buy his practice so that he could retire.
Speaker 3: And it was about a mile and a half away,
Speaker 3: and I figured this would compliment my practice perfectly.
Speaker 1: Things were looking great, like Lynn's practice was bringing in
Speaker 1: a good amount of money. It was nearby. Doctor brand
Speaker 1: didn't only a day or two to make a decision
Speaker 1: because the market in the Bay is very competitive, so
Speaker 1: he tried to do his due diligence by looking through
Speaker 1: Lune's patients records.
Speaker 3: It's pretty difficult if there's several hundred charts and you
Speaker 3: have an hour or so to go through the charts,
Speaker 3: you're just randomly selected.
Speaker 1: Doctor Brandon ultimately decided to pull the trigger and he
Speaker 1: bought the practice.
Speaker 3: I just had confidence that this could be a good
Speaker 3: fit for me, so I purchased a practice and in
Speaker 3: February of twenty twelve, I took over and I just,
Speaker 3: you know, decided that I'd start meeting the patients, getting
Speaker 3: to know them like I did my first practice.
Speaker 1: But within that first month he started to figure it
Speaker 1: that some thing was off.
Speaker 3: I don't remember the numbers exactly, but if it had
Speaker 3: been eighty thousand dollars a production a month, it was
Speaker 3: around like fifteen thousand.
Speaker 1: So in other words, doctor Brannon was doing a lot
Speaker 1: less work on these patients than doctor Loan was.
Speaker 3: I was thinking, maybe I'm doing something wrong, Like where
Speaker 3: am I going wrong here. Well, then the second month
Speaker 3: was similar, the third month was similar.
Speaker 1: And as he started seeing more and more of LUN's
Speaker 1: former patients, he started noticing something was off.
Speaker 3: I would look in their mouths and you know, scan
Speaker 3: really really well, and I couldn't find anything wrong with
Speaker 3: their mouth. And then they would stand up and be like,
Speaker 3: are you sure that you looked closely enough? I don't
Speaker 3: think you're looking closely enough. So then I'm now starting
Speaker 3: to second guess myself again. And then they'd go it
Speaker 3: up and go to the front office staff member that
Speaker 3: I had that also worked for the previous dentists was like,
Speaker 3: I don't know that this dentist is, you know, looking
Speaker 3: closely enough. I don't trust his diagnostic abilities.
Speaker 1: Doctor Brannon also started to notice a disturbing pattern.
Speaker 3: I was looking at the patients, you know, I was
Speaker 3: starting to see a very high number of root canals,
Speaker 3: a very high number of crowns, and so that was
Speaker 3: another red flag for me. Started to put two and
Speaker 3: two together and I and that's when I'm you know,
Speaker 3: it was probably maybe six or seven months in. I
Speaker 3: was like, this is not me. I'm not doing anything wrong.
Speaker 3: You know this there was something that was not done
Speaker 3: above board here on these.
Speaker 1: Patients, and he decided he needed to take a closer look.
Speaker 1: So over the next year, he looked at all of
Speaker 1: doctor Loehne's former patients, going through every single procedure that
Speaker 1: he had performed over the previous five years.
Speaker 3: Then I started to create a big spreadsheet because I
Speaker 3: knew that spreadsheet was important as far as percentages of
Speaker 3: treatment to see how far this dentist was from the norm.
Speaker 1: For example, Lund loved to give root canals. Fifty of
Speaker 1: his patients had fifteen or more root canals, with one
Speaker 1: patient getting twenty four. Typical person is only getting one
Speaker 1: to two root canals in their lifetime. Looking through the
Speaker 1: numbers that you you have in terms of you know,
Speaker 1: usually if there's a crown, I think you said, there's
Speaker 1: usually thirty percent seven percent chance that you're going to
Speaker 1: correct perform a root canal. And he was in correct
Speaker 1: ninety percent in some cases, So like correct and this
Speaker 1: is not like a difference of opinion if it would
Speaker 1: have been like ten or fifteen.
Speaker 3: Every day I get a patient coming in my office,
Speaker 3: you know, could be a new patient, right, and I
Speaker 3: don't know a lot of times I don't agree with
Speaker 3: that the other dentists did, but that's a difference of opinion, yeah, right,
Speaker 3: and me and one of my patients could move or leave, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: And that dentis may not agree with what I did,
Speaker 3: but being in the ninety percentile range when it should
Speaker 3: be in the three to seven percentile range is way
Speaker 3: outside norm.
Speaker 1: And if that wasn't bad enough, Lun was also charging
Speaker 1: patients insurance for work he never actually did. After seeing
Speaker 1: just how widespread this overtreatment was, Brennan felt like he
Speaker 1: had to do something about it.
Speaker 3: And then I started talking to them one by one.
Speaker 3: Some were already well aware, some had suspicions, and.
Speaker 1: So doctor Brandon, along with several of LUN's former patients,
Speaker 1: ended up suing him. There were some settlements. Lon's insurance
Speaker 1: had some big payouts. Loun never admitted to any wrongdoing,
Speaker 1: but he was arrested in twenty fifteen and charged with
Speaker 1: dozens of felonies for insurance fraud, and he eventually ended
Speaker 1: up surrendering his dental license in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: A lot of them were like, I'm so stupid. How
Speaker 3: could I be so dumb? I can't either, and I
Speaker 3: would say to them, this is not about intelligence. This
Speaker 3: is betrayal of trust. Like that's what it boils down to.
Speaker 3: It has nothing patient be like I've had all these
Speaker 3: How did I let this happen to me? Twenty eight
Speaker 3: rou canals I must be stupid and says betrayal of trust.
Speaker 3: You go to someone for all these years, dry doctor,
Speaker 3: this person betrayed your trust. Yeah, and that's hard for
Speaker 3: some people to swallow. There's you know, you know in relationships,
Speaker 3: there's some spouses that have infidelity and one's spouse may
Speaker 3: know but doesn't want to bring up that topic because
Speaker 3: it's the betrayal of They don't want to, they don't
Speaker 3: want to deal with it. They can't handle it psychologically.
Speaker 1: But despite what doctor Brannon went through, he says he
Speaker 1: thinks this type of overtreatment is extremely rare.
Speaker 3: I think in any profession, no matter what you go into,
Speaker 3: you know, law enforcement or medicine or you know, lawyer's attorneys, whatever,
Speaker 3: I feel like ten percent I think cross the line.
Speaker 3: I think no matter what profession are going to, you're
Speaker 3: going to run into people that do the wrong thing,
Speaker 3: that don't do the right thing. And I felt like
Speaker 3: that article in particular kind of led the reader perhaps
Speaker 3: to believe that there's a much higher percentage, say, in
Speaker 3: dentistry than any other profession. But in reality, I've been
Speaker 3: doing dentistry twenty years now. I have a brother that's
Speaker 3: been doing it twenty five and a father that's has
Speaker 3: been a dentist for fifty seven years. And when you
Speaker 3: combine the three of us together, that's that's a lot
Speaker 3: of experience, and it's a lot of colleagues, a lot
Speaker 3: of other professors, other people in the profession that we've
Speaker 3: come in contact with, and I and them have never
Speaker 3: seen anything like that.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like there needs to be something done
Speaker 1: more on just the you know, a more nationwide level
Speaker 1: in terms of dentists and holding them accountable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's you know, people always ask I don't I don't.
Speaker 3: I think the profession would be completely different if it
Speaker 3: was big brother was watching, right. I think I think
Speaker 3: that would be hard to be a dentist. I think
Speaker 3: less people would want to be a dentist. I mean,
Speaker 3: there's a certain amount of ethics and integrity we're supposed
Speaker 3: to have. There's a similar to a Hippocratic oath that
Speaker 3: we take as a dentist. I don't you know, I
Speaker 3: mean like a governing body of some sort. You mean, right,
Speaker 3: like say the IRS for taxes or yes, I mean
Speaker 3: we have There is the dental board, and the dental
Speaker 3: board has one primary goal, and it is nothing but
Speaker 3: to protect the patient.
Speaker 1: So my first thought after reading this story is how
Speaker 1: do you not become that person who has all this
Speaker 1: unnecessary work done. This is my recommendation, This is doctor
Speaker 1: Sarah Ada.
Speaker 9: If your gut tells you that something's up, go get
Speaker 9: another opinion. In general, dentistry is not emergent. There are
Speaker 9: definitely some emergent situations where you need to make a
Speaker 9: decision that day, but most of the time you can
Speaker 9: take home the information and you can sleep on it.
Speaker 1: And this advice was also shared by doctor Charylyn. But
Speaker 1: as you'll hear, I don't like this advice.
Speaker 10: If it feels like it's weird, I would take a
Speaker 10: step back as a patient, be like, let me think
Speaker 10: about this before we move forward, and you can get
Speaker 10: a second opinion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to say, how do you so
Speaker 1: I get a little bit frustrated with this feedback of
Speaker 1: like get a second opinions. How usually when this is happening.
Speaker 1: You're going for your check up, right, your dentist is saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you need to get this thing done. I can do
Speaker 1: it now, right, And you know, part of what I
Speaker 1: goes through my mind is like, Okay, to get a
Speaker 1: second opinion, I need to go search and find another dentist.
Speaker 1: And what if they say the exact same thing. Now
Speaker 1: I'm paying out of pocket because my insurance is not
Speaker 1: going to pay for that second appointment if I've already
Speaker 1: you know, used it up for a year. So yeah,
Speaker 1: is there just like no good options outside of like,
Speaker 1: you know, go get somebody else to give you X
Speaker 1: rays and give your opinion.
Speaker 10: You don't have to necessarily take x rays again. You
Speaker 10: could take your records from the office you went to,
Speaker 10: so like that would save you because those records are yours,
Speaker 10: like you paid for them. So you'd ask them like, hey,
Speaker 10: could you give me my records and they have to
Speaker 10: give it to you, so you could take those too
Speaker 10: a different office or I mean, now, I know I
Speaker 10: work at a dental school, but dentald school is a
Speaker 10: really good option if you have a local dental school
Speaker 10: near you. What's great about it is you get so
Speaker 10: many eyes looking at you, right, Like, I know some
Speaker 10: people are kind of like, well, I don't want a
Speaker 10: student looking at me, but that student has to be
Speaker 10: checked off by like multiple dentists and professors, right, So
Speaker 10: there's really not a lot of places you could go
Speaker 10: to where like multiple dentists are giving you an opinion.
Speaker 10: So it is it is a good way to kind
Speaker 10: of like get that feedback because especially students are taught
Speaker 10: these fundamentals and conservative approach, so they're usually not going
Speaker 10: to overtreatment playing you.
Speaker 1: Have you ever been in a situation when you felt like, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to get a second opinion on this thing,
Speaker 1: but like it seems like it's too much trouble.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I probably just wouldn't deal with it. I'd either
Speaker 7: just stop going and yeah, let my teeth throt, or
Speaker 7: I would just pay. Yeah, but the school I guess
Speaker 7: also they wouldn't have the profit motive incentive is another benefit,
Speaker 7: yeah for their side.
Speaker 6: But yeah, I just don't feel like I would ever
Speaker 6: have the bandwidth.
Speaker 1: For that exactly.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 7: It's like if I had nothing else to do but
Speaker 7: work on my teeth, yep, sure, mm hmm.
Speaker 6: It also kind of feels like it's just such a
Speaker 6: bomber man, because like you've got, you've you when you
Speaker 6: think about all these different parts of your body that
Speaker 6: you need to maintain, including your brain and emotions. As
Speaker 6: a therapist, which and I am like drawing some comparisons
Speaker 6: to to like my professional world after that, but it
Speaker 6: just feels like, Okay, I've made it to the dentist
Speaker 6: my twice a year visit, like which is terribly annoying
Speaker 6: and often like a bad experience. I don't have who
Speaker 6: in the world like has the resources, the time, the money,
Speaker 6: the mental capacity to like decide whether or not they
Speaker 6: believe their dentist.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and then who knows how long that's going to
Speaker 7: take too. Like I said, I'm waiting months for my checkup.
Speaker 7: There's something wrong there. And then they're like, okay, go
Speaker 7: to another person. It's like, now this whole thing might
Speaker 7: take three months. If I have real pain, It's like, yeah,
Speaker 7: I'm just gonna be like, all right, just take it
Speaker 7: out or whatever, Just do it now.
Speaker 6: The onus on the individual just in it, you know,
Speaker 6: just for everything. It's just so heavy, it feels so burdensome.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna take one more brick and when we
Speaker 1: get back. I'm gonna tell you guys about a startup
Speaker 1: of plans to blow up the dental world as we
Speaker 1: know it. Okay, we are back. I'm Noah Devin Lily.
Speaker 5: So.
Speaker 1: A few days ago I took a trip down to
Speaker 1: Soho to meet the founder of a new dental startup.
Speaker 1: I'm good. Are you all right? Can I have you
Speaker 1: start up by just introducing yourself.
Speaker 4: Hey, my name is Tyler Burnett. I'm co founder of
Speaker 4: CEO here at Wally Health.
Speaker 1: Tyler was inspired to start Wally after having his own
Speaker 1: run in with a dentists after moving to the US
Speaker 1: from Canada.
Speaker 4: And being told I needed eight fillings when I didn't
Speaker 4: need them right, and so I wasn't showing any diagnostics.
Speaker 4: I wasn't educated on what was going on with my
Speaker 4: oral health. During that appointment, I was told by dentists
Speaker 4: that I had eight cavities and they needed to be
Speaker 4: filled immediately and it was going to cost me a
Speaker 4: lot of money.
Speaker 1: He didn't end up getting the fillings, but he did
Speaker 1: come up with the idea for the startup named Wally.
Speaker 4: We're building the future of dental care. So what we're
Speaker 4: doing is solving a major healthcare crisis.
Speaker 1: So about forty percent of working age adults in the
Speaker 1: US go to the dentists each year.
Speaker 4: We want to see that over eighty percent.
Speaker 1: Tyler thinks Wally can change that by making oral care
Speaker 1: more affordable and approachable.
Speaker 4: Our product is simple. It's two hundred and forty nine
Speaker 4: dollars per year, so it's membership based and we provide
Speaker 4: unlimited dental cleanings, diagnostics, exams with dentists at any of
Speaker 4: our locations here in New York and New Jersey at
Speaker 4: the moment.
Speaker 1: Tyler, who is married to a dentist, by the way,
Speaker 1: is extremely critical of the industry and says it does
Speaker 1: not invest in prevention or the patient experience. He says, Wally, though,
Speaker 1: has different incentives.
Speaker 4: We're honestly incentivized to prevent and be proactive in our care,
Speaker 4: which no other dentist in the country is.
Speaker 1: By the way, No, we're very proud.
Speaker 4: We don't have drills, and while you're not going to
Speaker 4: get drilled.
Speaker 1: So while it doesn't actually do any major dental work
Speaker 1: in house, they offer things like aligners in cavity of
Speaker 1: reversal treatments for an extra fee. But if you need
Speaker 1: like real work, they'll refer you out to someone else.
Speaker 4: Going to the dentist is one of the biggest scams
Speaker 4: of our modern time here in the United States. It's,
Speaker 4: pound for pound, the most expensive healthcare experience we have
Speaker 4: as patients, as consumers. And what I mean by that
Speaker 4: is we spend more proportionately when we go to a dentist.
Speaker 4: That rate is higher than any other healthcare experience where
Speaker 4: you're going to a doctor, you're getting a prescription field,
Speaker 4: the out of pocket spending is off the charts. A
Speaker 4: big reason why that's the case is because insurance is broken.
Speaker 4: Insurance is really driving the rules for the industry, and
Speaker 4: then we have private equity that's come in and been
Speaker 4: very good at playing those rules.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: They're the experts, and so you know, they own thirty
Speaker 4: percent of all dental locations. They're going to own forty
Speaker 4: percent by the end of this year. So it's not
Speaker 4: getting better anytime soon. But they come in and they
Speaker 4: play those rules really well. One thing they do is
Speaker 4: they find all of the treatments that an insurance plan
Speaker 4: will cover. So that's why you see a lot of
Speaker 4: extra treatments being sold and I mean a diagnosed and
Speaker 4: sold because the insurance will cover all of these little
Speaker 4: treatments up to a certain point. I know dentists dental
Speaker 4: groups to be clear, that will know their patients insurance
Speaker 4: before they've come in for their first appointment and already
Speaker 4: have a game plan on what they're able to sell
Speaker 4: before they've even looked at your mouth or taken a diagnostic.
Speaker 1: So, while he doesn't actually accept insurance.
Speaker 4: We didn't want to play those rules. Look, we knew
Speaker 4: to be true to to our our mission around preventive
Speaker 4: and productive care, we had to build the way we
Speaker 4: wanted to build, and we didn't want our thinking to
Speaker 4: be corrupted in any way.
Speaker 6: I don't know anything about this startup, but he's saying,
Speaker 6: you know, if we accepted insurance, like we there, we
Speaker 6: would have no agency over becoming corrupted morally like that
Speaker 6: it would just happen to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like can how about like that?
Speaker 6: Agency also just like lies with you as the provider. Yeah,
Speaker 6: just like maybe don't get corrupted, you have control.
Speaker 1: Over So I thought it would be weird for me
Speaker 1: to talk about this service without trying it out for myself.
Speaker 1: So I was actually able to get a Black Friday deal,
Speaker 1: so I only paid one hundred and fifty dollars. It's
Speaker 1: usually two hundred and fifty dollars for the year. And
Speaker 1: I made my first appointment to go to Wally's Williamsburg
Speaker 1: location in Brooklyn. So this was even before I spoke
Speaker 1: to Tyler, so I had no idea I was doing
Speaker 1: a story on Wally or who I was at all.
Speaker 1: Because I wanted to truly be on their cover and
Speaker 1: get the real experience. So I walked into the building.
Speaker 1: There's no front desk person, there's no one to greet you.
Speaker 1: There's just an iPad that you sign in on. There's
Speaker 1: music playing that does not, you know, sound like this
Speaker 1: music at all. And the first thing I noticed that
Speaker 1: it's pretty noisy. So all the machines are crew are
Speaker 1: going off. There's no actual walls. It's just a wide
Speaker 1: open office space, but there are paper dividers where there
Speaker 1: are dentist shares and where people are getting their work done.
Speaker 1: So sit down in the lobby, I wait for my
Speaker 1: name to be called. They bring me over to my section,
Speaker 1: which is divided by these paper walls, and the dental
Speaker 1: assistant starts talking me through what they're going to do
Speaker 1: for today.
Speaker 9: Welcome. While I know it's the first time here, and
Speaker 9: I'm going to be your dental.
Speaker 2: Assistant for the day, Sauce.
Speaker 9: It is the first time I'm going to start up
Speaker 9: the problems of diagnostic exams. So I'll start up with
Speaker 9: a scan of your teeth followed by the correctly.
Speaker 1: I think you'll see the.
Speaker 2: High episodes that you're saving.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right now. I would say every single person
Speaker 1: I talked to was really informative in a way that
Speaker 1: I was not used to. At the dentists, they really
Speaker 1: talked me through step by step what they were doing
Speaker 1: while he uses this Swiss technology called GBT, which doesn't
Speaker 1: involve any scraping, so it was really pain free and
Speaker 1: past the eye test, it looked just as effective as
Speaker 1: my normal cleanings. And then at the end of my appointment,
Speaker 1: I talked to the dentists for a few minutes. Thanks
Speaker 1: for you're flossing unneath this bridge every day, okay, using
Speaker 1: those of the rudders.
Speaker 7: That way you can just keep everything cleaned out underneath it.
Speaker 1: Okay, and I was on my way. So for my
Speaker 1: first appointment, I felt like I had a pretty good
Speaker 1: experience at Wally, but I wanted to see what were
Speaker 1: the major complaints that people had as well. So one
Speaker 1: of the biggest issues people have is that this idea
Speaker 1: of unlimited cleanings. So the earliest I was able to
Speaker 1: book my next cleaning was two months after my first appointment,
Speaker 1: so you know, not truly unlimited.
Speaker 4: Sometimes you know, growth outpaces what we thought it was
Speaker 4: going to be, and that's you know, quote unquote a
Speaker 4: good problem to have as a business, but we're always
Speaker 4: building to be ensuring there aren't limits on unlimited.
Speaker 1: Some patients also felt, similar to a lot of the
Speaker 1: dentists that we've been talking about, that Wally was trying
Speaker 1: to upsell them on deep cleans and other add ons
Speaker 1: that don't come up the members.
Speaker 4: So even though we go through such rigorous modern diagnostics
Speaker 4: where we educate and talk through them, there is always
Speaker 4: going to be a group of people that are not
Speaker 4: going to react well to that information.
Speaker 1: And he said, at the end of the day, if
Speaker 1: you don't want to do the treatment, like you don't
Speaker 1: have to. You know, they're not pressuring you, they're just
Speaker 1: letting you know. So Wally only operates a few locations
Speaker 1: in New York and New Jersey right now, so it's
Speaker 1: not really going to upend the entire system. Tyler says
Speaker 1: they have big plans to expand to fifty locations by
Speaker 1: the end of the year. There are some other startups
Speaker 1: who are also trying to reimagine the future of dentistry,
Speaker 1: places like ten and Glamory that are trying new approaches.
Speaker 1: Wally's model doesn't solve the problem for people who need
Speaker 1: major dental work, but I was curious what doctor Sherylyn
Speaker 1: thought about them.
Speaker 10: I mean, honestly, don't I don't have a problem with it.
Speaker 10: I think it's it's honestly pretty smart that they came
Speaker 10: up with a way to provide this type of accessibility.
Speaker 10: There's like kind of two groups of patients that would
Speaker 10: be really good for these type of places. People that
Speaker 10: are really good at maintaining their oral health already haven't
Speaker 10: had like a lot of dental problems in the past,
Speaker 10: but really like to keep their teeth clean and want
Speaker 10: to get more cleanings, and usually dental insurance only covers
Speaker 10: two cleanings a year, so if you can get more,
Speaker 10: it's amazing, right, So I think it's good for that person,
Speaker 10: and also a person who doesn't have dental insurance but
Speaker 10: also is really good at taking care of their mouth
Speaker 10: right and hasn't had a lot of issues. It's great
Speaker 10: to be able to get that like face time and
Speaker 10: cleanings like multiple times for that price.
Speaker 1: So doctor Sarah likes the idea of a membership but
Speaker 1: didn't love that patients may be seeing a variety of
Speaker 1: dent to set Wally.
Speaker 9: The more I get to know a patient, the more
Speaker 9: I understand one of their past experiences and two what's changing,
Speaker 9: I can notice those changes a lot better, and I
Speaker 9: get to know what they like as far as care
Speaker 9: goes and as far as you know, let's say they're anxious,
Speaker 9: like what works really well for them? Each dental visit
Speaker 9: gets a little bit better. Are when when we know
Speaker 9: how we can best care for them.
Speaker 6: We've heard a lot of claims about who how many
Speaker 6: dentists are.
Speaker 1: Or not scammy, and there's no hard numbers to that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, how could there be? Yeah, But like
Speaker 6: I feel like probably I imagine I want to imagine that
Speaker 6: most dentists are just like people who want to do
Speaker 6: a good job at their job and are trying to
Speaker 6: like make an honest living. And I think there is
Speaker 6: probably like a subset of dentists that are trying to
Speaker 6: make the most money possible, but by scamming their customers.
Speaker 6: Just like there are my like family doctor when I
Speaker 6: was a kid, got like arrested for pedaling opioids. That's crazy.
Speaker 6: He's a fine doctor to me anyway. But like those,
Speaker 6: those professionals exist in any profession. Like I feel more
Speaker 6: concerned about, like more broadly, people not being able to
Speaker 6: get the care that they actually do need, because like,
Speaker 6: our teeth are in our bodies and they do matter,
Speaker 6: and like an infection is kind of an emergency, like
Speaker 6: because that can spread and that can become like a
Speaker 6: really serious problem. Like your teeth are connected to.
Speaker 1: Your your health.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and so just the fact that it's separate, that
Speaker 6: the insurance is separate is what's so terrible. Just like
Speaker 6: I feel like the real enemy is our like the
Speaker 6: healthcare system, and not so much the individual dentists who
Speaker 6: are I want to believe, for the most part, just
Speaker 6: trying to like do their jobs.
Speaker 1: I agree with you, I think the big issue is access, right,
Speaker 1: I think I don't think the issue with dentistry is
Speaker 1: all the dentists are trying to scam us and say
Speaker 1: we have cavities that we don't have. I do think
Speaker 1: there's a subgroup that is not conservative of enough in
Speaker 1: terms of dental care, and they're doing too much work
Speaker 1: when that don't need to be done. But I don't
Speaker 1: think that's the majority of dentists. Yeah, let's put it
Speaker 1: this way. People, the only reason that people know that
Speaker 1: they went to a dentist that is maybe not conservative
Speaker 1: is enough is because they go to a conservative dentist
Speaker 1: who says, actually, you don't need this work done, right.
Speaker 1: Like it's if all the dentists were conspiring against us,
Speaker 1: you would never have that moment where someone would be like, oh,
Speaker 1: actually you don't need all these cavities filled. So I
Speaker 1: think there are more good than bad dentists. I think
Speaker 1: more people just need to go to the dentists, and
Speaker 1: you know, and I think part of that is costs.
Speaker 1: It's expensive. And I think another big obstacle is this
Speaker 1: anxiety piece of it, right, and it's like the patient experience, right,
Speaker 1: And I think there is a little bit of like
Speaker 1: old school dentistry needs a bit of an update because
Speaker 1: even like the best case scenario, if a dentist is
Speaker 1: not very pleasant. So I think there does need to
Speaker 1: be a bit more of a priority for dentists on
Speaker 1: patient care.
Speaker 6: I agree with you, Like, obviously the experience really needs
Speaker 6: to improve, and dentists need to be more thoughtful and
Speaker 6: caring of the patient experience exactly.
Speaker 1: You know, we should send some some dentists to some
Speaker 1: of your schooling. You know, we'll send up the little
Speaker 1: school of dentistry where you'll teach them some personal skills.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 6: My god, if okay, if any dentist wants to do
Speaker 6: some like one on one coaching with a therapist on
Speaker 6: some bedside manner of skills, maybe I actually don't know
Speaker 6: if I can do that ethically. Dentist need therapy.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you know, if you've been hurt by the misconception
Speaker 8: by anti dentist sentiment in popular culture, I welcome you,
Speaker 8: yoss heals.
Speaker 1: It took a minute, but I had a lot of
Speaker 1: fun putting together this episode. If y'all are a fan
Speaker 1: of no such thing, please please please share this episode
Speaker 1: your favorite episode with your friends. We love making a show,
Speaker 1: and the only way we can continue to do it
Speaker 1: is if y'all keep sharing it and talking about it
Speaker 1: and get more people to listen to it. Our special
Speaker 1: guest for this episode was Lily Kaplan sitting in for Manny.
Speaker 1: Check out Lily's Reality Tests newsletter. We're gonna link to
Speaker 1: it in our show notes, and make sure you check
Speaker 1: out her previous episode if you haven't heard it already.
Speaker 1: It's titled do You Need Therapy. We're gonna link to
Speaker 1: it in the show notes. Thank you to our panel
Speaker 1: of dentists for this episode, Doctor Sarah, Doctor Sharylyn, and
Speaker 1: doctor Brandon. Thank you to Tyler Burnett at Wally, and
Speaker 1: thank you to aj Jacobs for breaking down the history
Speaker 1: of dentistry. As always, if you have feedback for the show,
Speaker 1: you can hit us up at Manny Noah Devin at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com, or you can call us at the
Speaker 1: number in our show notes. No such thing as a
Speaker 1: production of Kaleidoscope Content. Our executive producers are Kate Osborne
Speaker 1: n Man guest Hati Kudur. The show was created by Manafidel,
Speaker 1: Noah Friedman and me Devin Joseph. The theme in credit
Speaker 1: song is by Manny, mixing for this episode by Steve Bone.
Speaker 1: All Right, we'll see you guys next week. Good Bye.
Speaker 5: No such thing