Apparently I'm a risk to the staff there, because I'll go on a violent, possibly drug-induced rampage.

Also, I can only be treated by a male dentist.

I'm now signed on with a dentist in a different county, who - inexplicably - hasn't needed to hire bouncers whenever I visit.

I'm not entirely unsympathetic because frontline healthcare has to be one of the harshest jobs going, so some false positives are only to be expected - even if in this case that means labelling a drug-free vegetarian teetotaller whose last street brawl happened at age 7 as a social risk.

But still. The real problem is the lack of NHS dentistry in this county. I made the mistake of assuming the NHS dental care meant that NHS care would be available. But in practice there almost isn't any, and what used to be a free community service has been reduced to emergency-only status, and even that's only available for very limited periods.

I'd go private but it was a private dentist who caused the problem in the first place by 'improving' a crown that didn't need his attention - possibly just so he could pad out his bottom line. (His surgery has closed now.)

As usual, the underlying issue is our old favourite about greed being good, and the culture of abuse that it's based on. Dehumanising people for financial gain and/or to minimise 'costs' like social services is fascism, pure and simple.

If the system doesn't model empathy and does model scarcity, then scarcity and patient abuse - up to and including preventable death - become inevitable.