Cost of dental care...

About 50 years ago I had 2 taken at a time with only local anesthetic. Each time the gum had to be cut away to access the teeth and the teeth drilled and split with a chisel to get them out of the jaw. The dentist actually got up on the chair and leaned against me to get the right angle on the work he was doing. Then I was stitched up and sent home with a latex glove which had frozen water in it. They did give me a prescription for codeine pain pills (IIRC). Chew on the one side they said, the stitches will dissolve (its NEW) they said. 6-10 months later a piece of tooth migrated out of the gum and was discovered when I bit down on a pancake. Given the value of the dollar today I would think that the price you've been quoted is entirely reasonable

The public condition...

There are any number of politicians who will unabashedly lie to any and all to pursue their own self interest. We, the people, win only in as much as we can connect their self-interest with ours. For some of these politicians, controlling others is part and parcel of that self-interest. There is now a huge swath of citizenry who either believe they will benefit or are so pitiably ignorant of basic scientific, economic, historical, and parliamentary facts to do anything but follow them blindly. Of course, people in every "sector" of the range of opinion believe that they are THE ones who are not "those" people. Historically, that close mindedness inevitably results in some sort of violent resolution. I am not looking forward to that.