Looking on the bright side: We may be able to finance needed dental work by selling existing crowns.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

There is currently no performing asset class.

If serious deflation sets in then cash will actually be a growth investment because the value of cash increases as prices deflate, but as things stand right now cash is merely preserving equity, not making big gains.

In an environment where stocks, commodities and real estate threaten further declines and cash is merely flat there is nowhere for investment money to go. The flight to safety (and possibility of deflation) has driven up all non-risky bonds so the yields are pitiful.

Meanwhile every central bank is printing money around the clock, threatening inflation down the road. (If we're lucky!)

And, of course, India and Pakistan are in a dynamic more ripe for nuclear exchange than the US and USSR were since 1962.

As someone who has always laughed at gold investors as crazies, I gotta admit that gold is probably the one hot asset of 2009.

If golds reaches $2000/ounce I can probably replace some of my aging gold dental work with new porcelain crowns, covering the cost entirely by selling the old gold.


See, it's not such a bad economy!

Now if only my kidneys would appreciate a little more I can pay this gas bill...

[Mika]

1. Plus its more likely your new crowns would be made in China.

Thanks to free trade, and UPS /Fedex, more dental prosthetics are being fabricated there every day.

The highly skilled, hard working, moderately paid, American dental laboratory industry (which is a prototype manufacturing industry) is being killed off at a rapid rate.

Our country is being gutted to the bone.

[John Q. Citizen]

2. Crowns are now being fabricated "in house." I got one about 6 months ago and they use a

computer to measure the prepped tooth and viola, a new crown in about 15 minutes.

Better fit and cheaper cost.

No temporary needed. One stop ceramic crown.

[Mika]

4. ALL of those machines are foreign made. A license fee is paid for every crown.

There's no long term studies on the life cycle - most last about only 5 years (unacceptable in my practice).

As to the "better fit".. maybe true, depending on the skill set of the practitioner. Of course, there are some bad labs around too, but why a DDS would continue to use a lab that produces a bad fitting restoration is beyond me.

IMO, the CAD/CAM systems compare to digital photography. Finite resolution. Pixelization. Whereas the tried and true polyvinyl siloxane impression systems and high quality lab fabrication are near infinite in resolution. That's why lab made PFM restorations last longer, are more accurate, and have a much higher fracture resistance - according to the "insider" professional studies.

These types of get rich quick schemes for the practitioner industry is killing off the tried-and-true dental laboratory industry, and those Austrian CAD/CAM machines can't do complex cases that require skilled teamwork. Part of that team are skilled dental lab techs, who are abandoning the field in droves.

The profession is being Walmarted. Low prices. Better living. My ass.

[SwampG8r]

3. shouldnt this be posted in GD:Dentistry?

[Mika]

5. LOL n/t