ROOT CANAL COSTS

[Sauchi]

Hi,

I was wondering if you could approximately tell me how much a root canal and crown should cost? my dentist is asking for $5000.00 for 3 root canals and crowns without final restoration and i was wondering if that was the normal price.

Thank you

[mbornfeld]

Dear Sauchi,

The issue of what a fee "should" be is not easy to determine, because the factors that go into fee determination are largely independent of the formal definition of the particular service under consideration. For example, fees vary widely-- sometimes by a factor of over 100%-- depending on local demographic and economic factors. These issues are legitimate considerations when judging whether fees are reasonable and customary, even though they may have no bearing on the value of the service delivered to the patient.

However, that does not mean that statistics related to fees are not compiled and known. One fee table available on the internet states the following "national average" fees during calendar year 2007 for the services you mentioned:
D3330- Root canal therapy, molar- US $1022.30
D2740- Crown, porcelain/ceramic substrate- US $1070.20

(These fees can be viewed at http://downloads.pennnet.com/web_dl/121.pdf )

Please note that I have made two assumptions here: first, that the crown to which you refer is of the porcelain/ceramic substrate type, as referenced in your other post ( viewtopic.php?f=5&t=42 ), and that the teeth receiving root canal therapy are all molars. It is uncertain what you mean when you say "crowns without final restoration", because crowns are usually considered final restorations. So, if the fee of $5000 includes 3 root canals and 3 crowns, you are getting a bargain, because the national average is 3 x (1022.30 + 1070.20)= $6277.50. If that $5000 fee does not include the crowns, then $5000 is $1933.10 over the national average fee.

Hope this helps...

[Tango7]

I was looking for similar information and found an article on the costs of such dental treatment abroad. One article was saying that root canal treatment in Bangkok Thailand was only 7,000 Thailand Baht. A quick conversion says that is the same as 196 US Dollars !!!
It's actually cheaper to fly to Thailand, take a holiday and get your teeth fixed. How come prices in the US are so high ???
For anyone interested, I found the article at http://thebangkokshoppingguide.com/dental_clinics_bangkok but it also says that cleaning is only 28 US Dollars...
Surely this means prices in the US are incredibly inflated and put off many people from going to see a dentist to receive important treatment.

Let's take your example of 3 root canal treatments for 5,000 dollars.

5,000 US = 178,000 Thailand Baht which is 157,000 more than the same treatment in Thailand. So, 157,000 Baht = 4,407 Dollars.

Don't tell me you couldn't buy a return flight ticket to Bangkok, stay in a top hotel for two weeks, go shopping and get your teeth fixed all for the same price and with probably money to spare.

Thailand might be a little far, but there are other countries offering similar deals.

[mbornfeld]

Dear Tango7,

You raise an interesting issue--that of health care tourism. It is not surprising that consumers, who have long ago discovered that cheap labor in foreign countries means cheaper products, have now discovered that outsourcing in the service industry is a less expensive way to go. The question of foreign outsourcing makes for interesting discussion-- not only in the economic sense, but also the political. There is nothing unique about health care that makes it immune to the lure of cheap foreign labor. And as is the case in other product industries, cheap labor no longer equates with inferiority-- witness the imminent demise of the U.S. auto industry in the face of foreign competition that is viewed as producing a superior product. Not a few foreign-born doctors come to the U.S. for professional training and then return to their respective native countries to practice-- often in a manner consistent with U.S. standards. In fact, members of my wife's family have been known to return to their native Colombia for health care service when facing medical issues that have not been satisfactorily met here in the States.

However, notwithstanding the focus of this forum, it is usually shortsighted to select a doctor based on his fees alone--whether domestically or in a foreign country. (This is not to trivialize the very real problem of the cost of health care, which has created an insurmountable obstacle between a large proportion of our population and the services they need. In fact, the American Dental Association has been under recent pressure to devise alternate sources of dental service in communities where access to care is difficult.) To be fair, the people who are going to fly to Bangkok for root canal are not the indigent people in rural communities, and not the elderly or infirm, but the relatively affluent who are most concerned with saving money. In exchange for these savings, they may be sacrificing in several areas that merit some notice:

• The quality of the care one will receive from a particular doctor in a foreign country is more difficult to assess in advance. Anyone who has read this forum will know my preference for selecting a doctor based on personal referral, and few foreign-based doctors will be selected by anything more than the sort of advertising web site you reference. While I won't disparage the reputation of any country, it is intuitively true that competence varies from doctor to doctor--not only here in the States, but in other countries as well. I wouldn't select a doctor based on a web ad, and I don't believe that most discriminating minds would, either
• A major reason why health care is so expensive in this country is that providers must come into compliance with a myriad of laws and governmental regulations that don't exist elsewhere. We could debate at length at whether these laws and regulations have merit (certainly, not all of them do), but most laws and regulations governing the health professions are ostensibly intended to serve the public good. Regulations dealing with competence, licensure, the procedural specifics of how health service is implemented, and avenues of redress that are available to a consumer who has been injured by negligent care-- these are much less stringent in many other countries.
• Most importantly, continuity of care is much more difficult to maintain if service is sought thousands of miles away from where you live. This may be less of an issue for a single, major medical procedure, but is a major detriment for something like dental care, which is universally considered a regular, ongoing process of health maintenance (at least, by those who have prioritized dental care rationally in their lives). In the example you provided, it is unlikely that anyone casual enough to have allowed the need for three root canal treatments to accumulate will be going back to Thailand every six months for a checkup or periodontal maintenance procedures. Not only is the coordination of specialty service and primary care that much more difficult, but the amount of enthusiasm many patients have for dentistry would be severely challenged by the effort of setting aside time and effort for regular travel.

And by the way--there are several managed care plans right here in this country where the established fee for a single-canal root canal treatment is not much more than your cited $196. Of course, dentists who participate in these plans have developed strategies for working the system-- and there is no reason to believe that there aren't dentists in Bangkok who employ similar strategies. Quoted from the linked site you provided:
"If you know or think you need dental treatment, find out what needs doing before coming to Bangkok."..."Private clinics in Bangkok make money by providing treatment and if you don't need any, they don't make much money and os it's best to go knowing what needs doing and this way getting your teeth fixed in Bangkok might be a very costs effect means of dental treatment..." (sic).

Caveat emptor applies-- not only here in the U.S., but everywhere...

[sornaol56]

Yeah, I'm not sure I would have wanted to get my root canal done overseas... you just never know what might happen, too many unexpected variables. I think that price sounds about right, I remember back 4 years ago, mine was just over $5,000 actually (porcelain)