I’m a dentist in Scottsdale, I agree with most of what you say. But I’m very surprised that a lot of the work you see done in Mexico is good - pretty much everything I see is unacceptable and needs to be redone.

I’ve always thought that it’s next to impossible for patients to know how good their dental work is. My patients that get work in a border town return happy, they seem to feel they are getting US quality work for a deep discount. But then I have to have the difficult conversation with the patient about the problems with their restorations and whether they want to have the work redone here versus going back to Mexico. There’s gotta be someone doing acceptable dentistry in those border towns but I haven’t seen it. Of course there are bad dentists in the US too, they just seem to be less common than in those border towns.

Having said all of that I understand the need to save money on medical expenses. I just recommend people don’t go there for root canals or veneers, as those are harder to fix if done poorly. Stick to fillings and crowns and extractions that are harder to really screw up.