You could end up with a brain infection, very easily.
If you cannot afford US dental care, and you are not super poor, get a 1 way ticket via Kiwi.com to a more “eastern” European Union country like Croatia or Poland. If you use scripts from GitHub or are very good at searching you can get such tickets for $200-$250. You can find extremely excellent dentists with great qualifications and reviews in countries like that, and many have amazing reviews and are super cheap.
A lot of people from EU countries, that do not have “socialized dental care” go to countries like that a couple times a year to get dental care.
> If you use scripts from GitHub or are very good at searching you can get such tickets for $200-$250.
This is the average cost, per tooth, of the work I had done here 2 years ago, in the US, at a dentist where I paid cash.
> You can find extremely excellent dentists with great qualifications and reviews in countries like that, and many have amazing reviews and are super cheap.
I’m wondering how cheap they have to be in order to make it cheaper to fly to europe. How much would be an extraction or a filling replacement?
Well, I am a dual US|EU citizen, currently living in Croatia. So, I do travel abroad a lot.
When I lived in the US, I had an individual plan through Costco (Delta Dental) that was quite a good deal. It was a Dental HMO plan, though. Really, the only thing I noticed that it did not cover was implants. However, Costco only offers it in a handful of states: https://www.costco.com/dental-insurance-services.html
In both cases above, if you get the Dental HMO, it has no annual or lifetime maximum dollar limits, no waiting periods, or pre-existing condition clauses.
Anyways, I used my American dental insurance to get cleanings, X-Rays, and fillings. I go to Europe a couple times a year at minimum anyways, so I use that to my advantage by getting more advanced dental care there.
Dental implants, especially Swiss implants, can be 8 times cheaper than what some dentists charge in the US. A Swiss implant, when all said and done, costs about $1000 USD in the more eastern EU countries.
I would stick to European Union countries, as the quality of materials is very high. There is some website like the link I posted above, that has implant success rates posted, by dentist. I just do not remember the website's name. Anyways, you take your time and do extensive research before you choose your dentist.
Anyways, I have a very rare immune-mediated disease affecting my autonomic nervous system, which affects salivation, so my teeth are totally jacked up, even though they look really nice. I also have type 1 diabetes, and it makes my teeth naturally more prone to infections. So, cost-wise, I am screwed when it comes to dental care. I know somebody with the rare disease I have, that has about 20 implants in her mouth.
But, if your teeth are really jacked up, and especially if you need implants (of course it is better than dentures), it is way cheaper to go to European Union countries. This is even for 1 implant. If you may need thousands of dollars in dental care, you may be better off going to the European Union to get that care.
If you cannot afford US dental care, and you are not super poor, get a 1 way ticket via Kiwi.com to a more “eastern” European Union country like Croatia or Poland. If you use scripts from GitHub or are very good at searching you can get such tickets for $200-$250. You can find extremely excellent dentists with great qualifications and reviews in countries like that, and many have amazing reviews and are super cheap.
A lot of people from EU countries, that do not have “socialized dental care” go to countries like that a couple times a year to get dental care.