When you’re shopping for dentists…
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.(AP) – Patients who had dental work done by Jairo Herrera may want to get a second opinion.
Herrera, 60, was arrested Tuesday on charges he ran an unlicensed dental office out of his garage.
Police said Herrera told them he made more than $100,000 last year pulling teeth and making dentures, crowns and implants.
He was charged with practicing dentistry without a license, use of dental equipment by a non-dentist, operating a dental lab without a license and dispensing drugs without a license.For some reason the dentist scene with Dustin Hoffman and Sir Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man keeps popping into my head…
Of course, the libertarian take on this is that he didn’t do anything wrong, so long as the patients were all consenting adults.
I have my doubts that his patients consented to having their teeth worked on by an unlicensed dentist.
My dental bill added up to one quarter of that for the treatment the dentist concluded needed to be done to my teeth. Maybe Jairo Herrera was a good inexpensive alternative. Many people here in Texas go across the border into Mexico to get expensive dental work done for about 1/4 of the price [voluntary outsourcing?] of those charged by the local dentists. The Mexicans are well trained in dentistry but are not licensed dental practitioners in Texas or the US.
We know very little of Mr. Herrera’s actual dentistry experience. I suspect he is a highly trained dentist whose Columbian education would not pass the standards of the Florida licensing authority.
Still, laws are laws, and the licensed dentists need the work to pay for the student loans and the college educations of their children. We don’t need undocumented workers mucking up the system.
I have yet to get that dental plan initiated because I am also contemplating making a trip to Juarez to visit a dentist a friend of mine has dealt with over the past several years.
“he ran an unlicensed dental office out of his garage.”
Boyd:
I’m sure it had some furnishings, but a garage? What, did they think it was the Mayo Clinic?
That’s a good piece of evidence to support your position, Joe, but without knowing the exact situation, I think it’s unwarranted to presume informed consent. Personally, I’m not prepared to express contempt for people on such limited information.