And "financing". We walked into a new dentist's office when moving to a new town, and their (immaculate and luxurious) front desk had racks of glossy literature talking about their various no-interest and low-interest financing plans and we just turned around and walked out. These are not dental offices. They are banks that have a small dentistry operation on the side.

Treatment plans are used in every medical field and are required for insurance billing.

The bigger problem is that most hospitals and medical offices won't tell you the billing codes for procedure pricing until there's a treatment plan, which requires seeing a doctor first, effectively preventing shopping for care by price.

This is terrible advice. I didn't go to the dentist for years, and when I went back, I certainly, undoubtedly required a treatment plan. But my dentist went through everything - every spot on the X-ray, backed up with photos taken with a dental camera. The point is, the offering of a treatment plan is not a metric to base anything on.