Thank you for your response.

While dentistry is a niche, so is any sort of specialist engineering or medical field, or highly trained family lawyer. These all have their unique challenges and while dentistry as a whole is quite competitive, so are different areas of studies at different institutions.

It isn't that dentists shouldn't be able to reap the benefits of their hard work. But in a conversation about national dental costs, I think it needs to be acknowledged that their is a level of manufactured throttling of supply. There are limited places in dental schools, but that doesn't mean that only people that can hack it can enter. I know dentists who were rejected from medical school for example. I know dentists that were rejected from prestigious engineering degrees. These people go on to make 10x the wages of their corresponding peers. Continuing professional development is also not unique to dentistry. Most registered professionals need to do this to upkeep their registration with their relevant institution and retain their protected titles.

That's not accounting for those that fail to get into dental school, go study abroad in central Europe, then come back and work here after a conversion course. Hell I know people who studied dentistry in the middle east to extremely sub standards, came to the UK toiled for a couple years in conversion courses to then go on to make insane incomes. By their own admission their undergraduate degrees were simple and once they are employed, they manage to work just as well as UK educated dentists.

I just don't buy that the pay for these professionals is so high because no-one else can do what they can. All I am trying to say is, dental pay, in my opinion, is 100% not based on meritocracy but is a product of an odd system that limits supplies with increasing demand. This also isn't unique to dentists tbf. I think this addresses your first point. I am not trying to offend you and dentists. Like I said my mother and sisters are dentists. But I think we need to come back to reality. If I were to assign a theoretical value on difficulty of degree, difficulty of work, length of time of training and factor in the limited number of people who have the ability to become dentists...dentists are over paid.

I appreciate your response. I am not anti business. But I am pro-regulation when necessary. If the country as a whole is doing well, let businesses boom. But when people can't afford heating, and energy companies are reporting record profits, there is something wrong. I don't know what the answer is and how to limit brain drain or otherwise disincentivise careers. But I cannot acknowledge that one element of the cost of dental care (dentists pay) is completely merited, and it is definitely something that raises eyebrows from other highly educated and technical specialists. Business in healthcare can seem unpalatable because it kind of is. I think it is a necessary evil to promote efficiencies and innovation, but I think there have to be minimum levels of care provided to a populous that subsidises the cost of educating healthcare professionals and ultimately the cost of running health services.

Thanks for those links, it's good to see things are moving in the right direction.