Routine dental X-rays are not backed by evidence

Current final year dental student pitching in here. While dentists of the past may push for unnecessary annual radiographs, the curriculum in dental school has changed to favour evidence-based dentistry. Annual bitewings are only indicated if you're a high caries risk, and, as the article mentions, 2-3 years if you're low caries risk. So your younger/newer dentist will be following much better protocols (and hopefully not scamming you)!

I started going to a new dental office a few years back with a bunch of younger staff here in Brooklyn. They clearly spent a ton of money on the build out, and all the dentists were probably 30s/40s. They did the typical "you skipped your x-rays last checkup, you're now 1.5 years behind. You need to do those now" thing. When I asked how much it'd cost out of pocket, they told me an update was $80. I thought "oh wow, I guess these new machines are just better and cheaper, as technology tends to go". They did them and then the dentist came in, told me that there was some feint thing on one of my molars that might possibly be a cavity and they should do a filling now. The hygienist seemed surprised, so I declined and said let's keep an eye on it. Went out to pay at the front desk, and nope, it was $80 per x-ray, (so $320), plus $150 for the dentist to try and sell me a cavity filling, plus the base price of the cleaning. I got upset, since that wasn't communicated to me, and they knocked off some of the x-ray cost.

I never went back. I found an older dentist and every patient in the office was a retiree, which made me feel confident they knew what they were doing (I'm sure they've got a lot of hard cases). I asked about the possible cavity and they said they saw nothing, everything is fine.

That's all just to say that the young dentists likely have a lot of debt between school and office build outs, and I wouldn't be surprised if they're up-selling services to try and get their practice out of it. I wouldn't trust them any more to be honest about practices just because they're young.

a couple years ago i needed a new dentist and the only place that I could get into was a big chain that has just expanded into the area (Aspen Dental).

it had clean new office and lots of fancy tech that to scan my teeth that i hadn't seen at my little hole-in-the-wall old dentist. i was optimistic.

they tell me that I needed four fillings and a root canal, and i was a surprised because i'd been going to a dentist every six months and nobody had mentioned anything like that. but hey, that must be the advantage of all those fancy scanners. right?

they walked me down to the "payment center" which was an office holding four employees whose job was to come up with payment plans to cover dental work. that's when i knew that the whole place was a racket.

Everything seems to be going in this direction. We were recently looking for someone to clear out insects and other pests from our property, and every one of them tries to steer you to a very expensive "plan" where you're billed monthly. We looked around for a long time for a veterinarian where there were more actual vet and vet tech staff than there were billing staff. We were recently referred to an orthodontist for my kid, and right from the start they were on us like vultures about their various "payment plans."

I feel like as the years go by, more and more of my cognitive cycles are spent trying to avoid scams and predatory businesses.