My wisdom teeth were stolen when I was a mere 16 years old. Being a minor child, I literally had no choice in the matter. My parents just shuffled me in there. They trusted our family dentist, and they would obey anything he recommended for us. He was generally quite trustworthy, although I am certain that my family helped out a lot with that shiny Porsche he drove.

After a long period in adulthood with no dental care at all, I was in need of some endodontic work, and so I signed up for, not insurance, but a "dental discount program" and found a local guy who saved my bacon. He did the endodonty and the crown, and I had some subsequent crowns that were probably needed, and some fillings, and he also drilled out all my "old" amalgam fillings, replacing them with resin, which seemed to be a good deal.

But he kinda kept going with that momentum, and I began to feel kind of pressured. He caught on to the fact that I would do anything he recommended, and my parents would step up and pay for anything I asked, and so we had this chain of no-questions-asked. At my final visit last year, his minions took no fewer than 18 X-ray images. Yes, 18 images of one mouth. I thought that was crazy excessive, and I let them know.

During my exit drama, the front desk refused to give me any electronic copy of my records. She couldn't burn a CD and she refused to make a USB drive. She said she could email everything. I scoffed at the very idea. She said she could print it out. I told them they could die in a fire. They turned out to be quite capable of sending instant electronic records to my new dentist, however, within a day of my appointment when they were needed. Fuck bad dentists, man.

I've been through the wringer with every type of physician possible. They always have a new trick up their sleeves, and with information asymmetry, it is simply not possible to win their avaricious game. The most I can do, is dig in my heels when they come on fast and strong.

I also ditched my optometrist/optician office for similar reasons. The optometry exam was nice enough. But the opticians in the front had a sexed-up high-adrenaline 1990s soundtrack pumping so loudly, we could barely hear them. (And most of the patients were way more elderly than me.) And they would give us the hard-sell on $800 spectacles with all the trimmings that we didn't need. Nothing in writing, no "menu of options" or price list to peruse on our own time. Just hand over your credit card right now, you fool. I finally had enough of that. I've been fighting with Target Optical's appallingly-bad website but they did, eventually, make spectacles for me at a reasonable price, with only the features I wanted, and none that I didn't.