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1460 Dr. Takeisha Presson on COVID-19, Dental Insurance and Socioeconomics : Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran

9/15/2020 3:00:00 AM | Comments: 4 | Views: 331

Dr. Takeisha Presson is a native of Washington, DC. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Zoology with a minor in Spanish at Ohio Weselyan University. After working several years as a Biologist for the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, a branch of the Food and Drug Administration, she decided to pursue a career in dentistry. Dr. Presson attended and graduated from Howard University College of Dentistry with her Doctorate of Dental Surgery and completed a general practice residency at St. Elizabeths Hospital, a public psychiatric hospital for civilians and criminals which triggered her interest in mental health. Dr. Presson is a gifted clinician passionate about educating her patients on best oral hygiene habits and oral disease prevention. Her ultimate goal is to give them a reason to smile.

VIDEO - DUwHF #1460 - Takeisha Presson

AUDIO - DUwHF #1460 - Takeisha Presson

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It is just a huge honor for me today to be podcast interviewing Dr Takisha Rochelle Presson DDS a native of Washington DC who earned her bachelor of arts in zoology with a minor in Spanish at Ohio university after working several years as a biologist for the center for food safety and applied nutrition a branch of the FDA she decided to pursue a career in dentistry after obtaining certificates and dental assisting from Prince George’s community college she began working as a dental office manager with a reputable dentist in dc it was there she discovered dentistry was her passion and her innate need to desire to give people a reason to smile Dr Presson attended and graduated from hoard University which was obviously named after me with a doctor of dental surgery and completed a general practice recipe at St Elizabeth’s hospital who I guess was my aunt or was someone else a public psychiatrist hospital for civilians and criminals which triggered her interest in mental health Dr Presson is currently a member of the American dental association the national dental association the academy general dentistry American association of women dentists and alpha kappa alpha psora sorority which was started at Howard University by the way she regularly attends continued education courses to keep abreast of the latest dental treatment recommendation materials and technology she is a gifted clinician passionate about educating her patients on best oral hygiene habits and oral disease prevention her ultimate goal is to give them a reason to smile recognizing good dental habits evolve from relationships she enjoys getting to know her patients who she considers her family her relatability and skills that made her a highly sought after dentist when she's not in the practice she enjoys traveling singing dancing eating Maryland blue crabs and serving the community her dedication to service contributed her founding dimples smile dimples dental sweet foundation a 501c a portion of the practice monthly proceeds goes to the initiatives and uh she graduated from Howard university in 2008 and I told her uh before the show started that since her name is Takisha if she has ever has a daughter Takisha should name her daughter take issue with what do you think Takisha take issue with my god can you imagine always introducing your daughter is here is take issue with [Laughter] listen anyone that knows me they know I have a dark sense of humor so they would find that hilarious trust me poor child they'll find another nickname for him wow and I um gosh I um I think I should just take one minute to uh um say um something today we have a um today was a very uh um sad day I just I got I emailed you this right before the show um my gosh uh rip to Dr Eugene J Jordan DDS who died august 28th at the age of 83 years old a beloved dentist known for giving back to the community and championing social and cultural changes um he his dental practice made it a mission to serve children and others in Cleveland and east Cleveland who couldn't afford one um my gosh the doctor was heavily involved with the NAACP and once served as a president of the national dental association he was also instrumental in helping to establish a black history celebration in Cleveland and uh and bring Juneteenth celebrations so that's my middle name Eugene Howard Eugene Farran Dr Eugene Jordan thank you for a great life I’m sorry to start on that down note but uh um I had to do it but uh how are you doing I’m actually doing well but I wanted to say after hearing that and reading his bio I mean I just want to thank his life thank him for his life because he blazed so many trails and you know just hearing and reading his bomb biography I know that he blazed some trolls for people of color in particular in a dental field and so for that I just want to say thank you thank you oh my god thank you yeah and that's you know a lot of people always try to find the meaning of life you know you know and I like the one from the boy scouts the best just leave the playground better than you found it and I’m always telling my four boys didn't you kind of like being born in the united states and from 1989 to 93 I mean we already had roads and bridges and dams and nuclear power plants and the electric lawnmower I mean uh just keep it going how I want to get right to the meat of this um how has COVID 19 impacted you and for the most part you're in you're in uh downtown Washington DC is that right yep so what is what has it been like there because like because you know I the term united states I mean it's hard to compare Alaska to Miami or Albuquerque to Manhattan so what's it look like um where you're at in uh Washington DC I will say okay are you talking about three months ago versus today because I want to make sure I answer your question because three months ago which one are you referencing and I’m going to do the whole thing start with three months ago take walk me through the journey okay so I my journey with covet started in February I could tell that something was coming down the lines like people were whispering about something you know I have a faithful clientele and when people started to um call the office and say they need to reschedule I didn't understand what was going on so at this point I started to like redo my research start to google and I realized there's this virus that is just like taking over and right now it's up in Seattle Washington and they are predicting that it's gonna head towards us so march comes first week of march I come up with all these plans for how I’m going to get through it as a matter of fact I had a conversation with my landlord because I am a business owner as you know in dc but I rent my space I had a conversation my landlord I said um I hear that something is about to come down the pike that's going to affect our businesses and I think we're going to be closed my landlord thought I was crazy thought I was crazy I said do you have any provisions in place for your tenants if they have to shut their businesses down he didn't have an answer I said I think you need to come up with one because something is coming second week in march the mayor um declared and decreed that all non-essential businesses needed to close here's the issue dentists were considered essential businesses we were essentially open but here's the problem we could only do per the ada recommendations emergency services or non-elective um procedures now again normally that normally wouldn't be a problem but in my particular area of dc we didn't have a surge in people that had emergencies or that had non-elected procedures that need to get done so not only am I dealing with the population that didn't necessarily need me but I was dealing with now all of a sudden overnight the price of everything that we use went straight through the roof because the congress decided all of our personal protective equipment had to be outsourced to the hospitals and then they somehow put into fine print nursing homes so I found myself three months ago in a situation where okay I didn't necessarily have patience that I needed to treat but I didn't have the supplies and I was forced to essentially close my business all right so how does that work when you have bills that have to be paid I read your book uncomplicated business oh thanks that's why you made me nervous once I realized who I was talking to I was like wait hold up this is get we'll talk about that but I realized in that moment I didn't have a plan I literally just started my business three years ago I had a plan to move forward but I didn't have a plan for coving so three months ago what was it like being in the nation's capital everything is shut down but the government tells you that you must remain open because you are an essential business but you have no income coming in or we we're going to talk about that we're definitely going to talk about that no income coming in and you don't have the resources that you need it was a nightmare a complete and utter nightmare one week of being closed the second week all of a sudden my phone is ringing off the hook people realize I’m open but here's the problem I don't have the resources I only had a certain number of gowns that I could spare I didn't have any n95 masks you know we're dealing with you know cdc and um ocean not really knowing what's going on so there wasn't a whole lot of guidance fast forward now three months later we still don't have as the much needed ppe but we're in phase three here in dc so I now can treat all patients but we now have guidance from the American dental association of cdc and osha so that helps a whole lot and it was sad because you know the ada that I mean if they ever go to court there I mean I mean like when it was Texas when a guy said I’m a specialist and people say well that's not one of the specialties recognized by the ada they said well the ada is a it's a membership club it's not a government agency so move them aside you're down to cdc and osha and they weren't even on the same page I mean it's like how can you go to you can bounce the three government websites it's like you guys don't even have your story together yep and that was the problem that I found um it's like you want to do what's best for your office your staff your patients yourself but then you don't know how to move because you're getting inconsistent information but here's the thing is I told people because covet the virus itself was so new every day was going to be a discovery period and we needed to allow each organization grace to come up with a plan and that's what the problem was everybody wanted answers that just could not be given in the time frame desired by all of us and then what's really sad is um I mean there is no future or past there's only the present in physics I mean you can't walk your kid out on the porch and point out where the big bang was because that was 13.8 billion years ago it's gone so no one can tell you the future of the price of the stock market where the virus is going to I mean um you know they talked about a false surge I mean we're in September and if you remember when we were back in march April may everybody kept saying okay this is going to die down the summer and come back with a vengeance and now there's 10 different theories on that there's I mean look at the Nasdaq it's been hitting all new highs of all time while 40 million Americans lost their job and I got an MBA and I’m looking at this saying okay there are no legs to that camel walking around wall street I mean it's its legs are missing but the camel just keeps drifting high I mean this is I consider these times pre-covered and bat [ __ ] crazy I mean uh because I mean we don't know I mean we're both sitting there you don't know what's gonna happen September October November December I mean what do you what do you think uh what do you think it's gonna be like pretend we're on new year's eve right now and we're singing to uh um to prince 1999 um what do you what do you think it's going to look like at the end of the year do you think it's going to keep getting better a vaccine come out back to normal or do you think it's going to get worse stay the same I think we're going to have our version of the new norm and that's going to be everyone partying with their chin guards on you know what I mean by that no one is wearing the mask properly I shouldn't say no one a majority of the people are not wearing the mask the way it's intended so I have been out and I have watched people with the little mask dangling down or it's covering this so what's gonna happen at new year's eve celebration there's gonna be everyone partying with the little chin guards on now what I do think is gonna happen not to be me but I do believe that the cover virus is gonna continue to mutate and as long as it continues to mutate they're gonna be some casualties they're gonna be some casualties and you just better pray like hell that you're not one of them you know I try to be smart you try to be smart but at the end of the day you can't really tell people we can advise them but it's not for so much we can do to get people to abide by rules and regulations whether it's in a dental office or whether it's in a restaurant you know I get to see the whole gamut um I always tell people I am a patient provider and a patron you know I’m the three ps you know so I see it from all angles I just think that it's gonna be difficult and when it comes time for new year's eve celebration come next year we all gonna be partying I’ll have my mask on but there'll be lots of people with chin guards on I um I always watch this number I don't like to watch case numbers because um you know that just depends on how many people they've tested so I just like to take um the recovered uh which is uh around the world which is uh 19798 divided by the people who died which is 900 and 328 thousand uh and um it's um so 900 328 divided by 19 7989 it's about a four and a half percent chance that if you get this virus you'll die and um for some reason it likes older fat guys like me if you're a male even male pattern no I’m serious if you're male uh male pattern baldness over 60 obese uh I wouldn't say uh I’m obese but if you look at me long enough you'll get a root canal um I mean so it's I always look at it as I i'd have a four and a half percent chance time but what really scares me is I’m afraid they're going to do all this stuff for a vaccine but then you're reading the epidemiologist saying this thing's mutating um big time in different places could you imagine if this turns out to be like the influenza like you got a flu shot this year but it didn't work on this version so we finally get through all this but now there's a new mutant mutation going you know like the flu like your vaccine would only work for one version did you say imagine the data knows that it's very similar to the flu oh yeah I know but no I mean I mean no but seriously one might argue that it's going to be just like it because it's already showing the pattern it's already showing up I think that's exactly what's going to happen by the time they get ready to come out with the vaccine it will be null and void you know and I’m all for promoting um vaccinations but I think that this one we're not going to be able to move fast enough for the mutation we're not going to be able to and it's just it's a fact the data is already showing that and so it's interesting because I have a morning huddle um with my team daily and part of it I do use the covet screening checklist um hazardous wrist checklist that the ada provided because people do want to know what's going on and so when I ran the numbers with my team and I mentioned you know if you look at how many people live in dc 700 and something thousand people according to the most recent census and when we saw at that time I think the other day it was like 13 000 cases you do the math on that that's like one percent or not even not even that and then when you calculated the deaths in that it was a half a percent so here's the thing I understand it maybe our numbers are low because we did shut down and we were on the forefront of making sure you know we did we were our mayor was very aggressive with the shutdowns and the closures and so we did not get the covet um crisis that they saw in new york and that they saw in California and um in Atlanta we didn't get that here in d.c however statistically speaking [Laughter] those numbers are so similar to the flu we already know statistically speaking there will not be that many people that will die in this area and it's literally because of the numbers that are put out there this thing is parallel to the flu it's very it's very much parallel so for international viewers you're I hear that they all heard about the new york city thing um that was a complete crisis how far away is Washington d.c for new york city if you got in a car and drove down the highway uh the way I drive three and a half hours oh so it's that close so that that that's very close and that's an interesting I really like that if you look at the globe I mean 70 of the globe is just water and if you remove the water it's 90 desert but when you look at um the 8 billion humans they just they're only on the land but they're only on like a very small part of land but there's these uh there's a couple of dozen of these uh 50 million person strips and that's the big one in the united states from new york uh to Baltimore to Washington I mean it's a 50 million strip so you think something contagious like an airborne virus would be very fluent up and down a corridor of 50 million humans all living in the same area so um so have you how have you adjusted um what do you think the biggest adjustment you've made since covid do you have less staff more staff less hours more hours start with staff because um how because a lot of staff didn't want to come back I mean there was a lot of hygienists and assistants that said some of them you know their grandma lives with them at home they have kids and they're just saying you know what this is a novel virus nobody knows what's going on did you have a reduction staff out of just pure fear um I didn't reduce my staff out of fear I reduced my fear my staff because of economics I just could not afford to maintain them um one of the things I take pride in is it's been very hard having a boutique style practice in dc in this era where dentistry is moving more in a corporate direction my practice is boutique style it always has been I built it on the philosophy of one patient at a time you know um I never ever double and triple book my patience right so because I already had certain provisions in place meaning I was accustomed to not having a whole bunch of people in my practice and I do have a full operatory practice and it's a nice size but everything is everywhere every um operatory is compartmentalized so it's not an open bay or anything like that because I my office was designed for one patient at a time and because i've always been I have ocd can I have that slight confession right now so my ocd is just like over the top when it comes to cleanliness my patience and I think it's a true testimony for what I do they said they didn't feel anywhere else safe they felt safe in my practice so people were genuinely upset that they could not come into my office because they know I’m you know about making sure things are clean and on top of things you know I’m just on top of stuff and carrying guidelines and regulations like my ocd is just over the top so that benefited me when it came time for the staffing I didn't have the money no patience no money and unfortunately the ppl did not afford me the opportunity to really be able to pay for my staff you know people some people and then when you when you get down to the economics of things dc is very high you know the cost of living here is high the rent everything is high there is no way to get cheap it's more expensive here than it is like you said in Omaha Nebraska so when you take those numbers and being mindful that the cost of living in dc is more there was no way I could sustain my practice with no income coming in and keep my staff so for making an economic decision I chose to let my staff go and I let them go and they were texting me like when are we coming back they were ready to come back because they knew if nothing else I was going to make sure that you know they were covered and protected so dc is pretty small and it like 10 mile by 10 miles square I’m remember I’m going back but yes it's very small and do you work and live in that little dc square I do I live one mile for my practice so now so do you walk or do you have to um have a um car park for a garage I do both I walk and I do a shuttle so I have a shuttle that actually runs by my um my practice so I do both so would you um put that in have you ever lived anywhere that was lower overhead like if you ever lived in a in a more middle class rural area where else have you lived oh and I do need to correct you I attended Ohio Wesleyan university and I don't oh not oh you now I couldn't say the word I was looking at it and it's like I remember looking at I was like uh oh gosh uh um yeah uh she with a minor in spanish in Ohio what the hell uh so I just went to university I didn't know was Wesleyan what would you yeah Ohio Wesleyan university um it's actually in a very small town delaware Ohio um back then it was not heavily populated so that to me was a very rural setting so how much cheaper how many times more expensive would it live would it be to live in dc than Wesleyan university oh god the rent back there was like maybe six hundred dollars for a one bedroom versus in dc you're gonna pay about two thousand dollars minimum for one bedroom oh wow that's three times the cost we've already been talking about the square footage you know a one bedroom and I keep I say one bedroom but it could easily be like 600 square feet huh so um some people are um up the at the other end of the 50 million dollar 50 million human strip are saying that they think new york city will never be like it was now that's pretty doom and gloom but do you see um I’ll say like this um you know working from home when this hit obviously my dental office is a b2c business to consumer it's retail but my dental town magazine is b to b there's no customers or humans that comes in here and they had been asking to work from home for decades so we were all set up for that so that that trend was already starting and accelerating and I think all the pandemic did is took what existing natural inertia and just shoved it to the other end and now all these people at the other end think and I don't want to go back to the way it was um so I’m wondering how a big city like dc in new york city um I wonder what the new normal is going to be you know it it's interesting you should say that um because you know if we could work from home in patient's mouths using a robot or something like that that would be so freaking awesome but that's just not our reality I think that when it comes to dc I think dc is pretty much on the spectrum with new york city we're not going to come back I believe that um you know I believe listen I’m seeing things I have neighbors that have businesses that they are now going to be forced to file bankruptcy I have neighbors that are my business neighboring businesses that cannot reopen because they just cannot afford to reopen I live in a building where they lost 48 tenants because they just could not afford their rent they could not afford it 48 I had four they're about 300 and something people in this building and 48 people moved 48 um units became vacant during this whole period um the reality is the economy is just not there it's not there you know um I jokingly tell my staff that it's an employer's market right now you know we get to decide what we can pay people and if you want a job you know we can pay you the bare minimum and again it's not because that's what we want to pay you it's just we now have little income that we're expected to do a lot with you know the restaurants can only see 30 percent uh on average the restaurants can only see about 30 percent of the customers that they saw before thank god my business was structured in a way where we only saw one patient at a time however I’m noticing what's coming in because people have lost jobs and there are more people on unemployment here in dc that means that there's an increase in people on medicaid and so they're now getting subsidized health coverage and so that means more people are coming in that can't necessarily afford the dental services that they need but they need work done and so what's happening is you have more people if they have good credit tapping into credit to get their dental needs met to get their home um needs met to get their food insecurities met you know so there's so many different dynamics but dc definitely was hit hard we were hit hard on so many different spectrums and I do believe that we will not come back from it what's going to happen is that there's going to be a new redefined norm I believe that the cost of living is going to have to go down and though we are up in the tier with our minimum wage in the country they're going to have to reconsider that because they know that people cannot afford to pay people the minimum we just cannot everything has changed and so city council they're gonna have to establish new norms the mayor they're gonna have to get together and establish new dorms or otherwise this is going to be a ghost town people are already leaving I feed the homeless every month with my practice I now see new people that weren't there before they're more people in the tunnels they weren't there three months ago you know so we're going to have to establish a new norm in order to jump start the economy and get people back in housing because as a business owner a landlord doesn't want to empty property money is made by having tenants and that's just my perspective it's so bad and you know I never want to discuss religion sex politics violence whatever but the um the not just you know I’ll just talk for the whole herd of 8 billion homo sapiens um almost at least eighty percent of them are under just incompetent management I mean just at least eighty percent of the eight billion people are living under complete incompetency and they don't realize I mean and one of the things that's always scared me as i've read it through history is when people start putting buying food on credit that is never a good sign when you're having to put when you're having to buy groceries on a credit card that has a balance the future is very not bright and uh that's why I have no idea what wall street's even thinking about on the Nasdaq I mean talk about I mean you know sometimes in college you could kind of hear you kind of knew where the party was that's the lsd acid party going on in America because I mean like say that that camel doesn't even have legs it's just looking at like what the hell and um and then 40 million people lost their jobs 30 million of which have uh had dental insurance and we don't know how many of those jobs aren't coming back but it's gonna be a lot of them are you a medicaid provider I am oh you are okay so for the international deal I know most countries are normal and they have like one policy of the little country in the united states you have a federal policy that's called Medicare but then you got 50 states and they each have medicaid and the difference in the united states and the EU is in the EU brussels is a toothless tiger and each state is a national um country with the military in the united states each state is a toothless tiger and the head thug on the block is where you live Washington dc thank you very much for living where the overlords live uh so Medicare doesn't cover dental and um so when we talk about medicaid it's kind of crazy because each state has a different story but tell us your story and your story is even crazier because Washington dc isn't even a state it's not even in a state what exactly is it it's just a capital right capital of the united states but we are fighting for statehood because we do have taxation without representation we pay heavy taxes but yet we don't get the funding that we need and that was evident during covet 19. um when you think about how much of an impact the pandemic was on our city and to get less funding than Puerto rico which is a u.s territory that was insulting I pay taxes I pay a lot of money in taxes but yet I could not get the help that I needed so yeah we're the we're the capital of the united states but here's what I think but if but if you had to I mean if I had a choice between okay do you want to make the 5 million people in Washington d.c a state or break up Vermont into north and south Vermont making it two states would wouldn't you break up north and south Vermont so they're I mean like north and south Dakota I mean come on don't you think those people in Vermont need to be broken into two but anyway well yeah I used to always say it in Omaha and people from Nebraska thought I was crazy but when I was in uh MBA and when I was taking a business class in uh Omaha Nebraska um I used to look at the datas of north and south Dakota and think well someone needs to fall on a sword because one state's state government could do the services for both states and you could lower your cost in half and I always said why don't they just make it Dakota right my teacher I asked I can still remember asking my teacher that he just like uh just go away uh but uh but anyway so um so tell us about medicaid you participate in medicaid and tell the you know because a quarter of our viewers are still in school so what's the difference in being a medicaid provider and a blue cross and blue shield or delta provider in dc as far as I’m concerned nothing really nothing um here's the thing dc is I wouldn't say we're an insurance driven city but we do have a majority of our uh patrons have some type of dental insurance dc used to be a government city you know people had either federal government or um city government jobs and so by default they had benefits whether it was health care and dental and vision so we are for the most part an insurance driven city and because of that I say there is no real difference um in terms of what you see and expectation um you will be surprised like who is on medicaid and who isn't now let's talk about the reimbursement again is not that different the argument I just had with the let's just say allegedly care for us blue costs will shield how can you pay someone the same amount of money that you were paying them 10 years ago but you expect them when everything is increased the cost of living has increased there is inflation everywhere why am I getting the same amount of money that I would make on a medicaid patient but there should be some type of eliteness that comes with being having private insurance you would think that if you're paying something out of your check every two weeks that will put you at a certain tier unfortunately in dc the reimbursement rate is very similar with a lot of those insurances so it means nothing now dc medicaid is different than Maryland medicaid and Virginia medicaid dc medicaid is probably as close as you're going to get to a universal health care system in dc it covers a whole lot they give implants they give dentures they give nice crowns they really do take care of their pain you know their um their citizens dc take care takes care of their own the issue then becomes the fees the reimbursement rates are equivalent to what they were 10 years ago I cannot stress enough everything has gone up in dc my rent 10 years ago in dc was 500 cheaper than what it was or is today why am I still getting paid at the same rate so being a medicaid provider I will say this please know that you're going to get very few thank you but the reward of knowing that you're taking care of people that need you that far exceeds what comes out of others maps private insurances well just it is what it is you know it is what it is there's no gratitude that really is to be expected with that but and that's because they assume that their insurance is paying us more and the reality is they're not they're not so I personally choose to see medicaid patients because that's my way of giving back I grew up I was a little bit in my background I’m first generation everything I grew up in um a public housing development here in dc so I’m a Washingtonian through and through first generation everything so if it wasn't for medicaid i wouldn't have this smile I wouldn't have this healthy body and so my way of giving back to the system that helped me get along in life or get to where I am is to make sure that I give that population you know the services that they deserve to have whether they have the money or not so that's why I am a medicaid provider I know that I’m not going to get the thank yous I know that not everyone is going to understand why I do what I do so it has to be something larger at play for me and for me that's why I do what I do that's my way of giving back now when it comes to the private insurance again speaking on covet because I know we we've been talking about a whole lot when we talk about covey a lot of my colleagues and I are stepping away from private insurances we're stepping away from private insurances we found that the care first blue cross blue shields the deltas the met life the adult the um united health cares they haven't exactly been supportive during this whole pandemic and so how can you continue to support a business that doesn't support you because insurances are big businesses and as soon as patients because remember I’m a patient and I’m a provider when patients begin to understand that insurances are big businesses they'll understand that they're in the business of keeping money and making money they're the only ones when you talk about wall street they're the only ones that have been making money during this time they haven't really been dispersing that money to the providers we have put our lives on the line doing this whole pandemic we are essential but we don't get the respect of being essential we're essentially putting our lives on the line but yet we're getting underpaid and overworked now how does that work you charge the dentist to keep the people or the patients out of the hospital emergency rooms because you need that space for real covert cases so you keep our businesses open say that we're essential for emergencies only but you don't help us when you know everything has gone up so I don't I don't have many choice words for insurance companies but I will deal with medicaid because again that's my way of giving back your heart has to be in it for medicaid so does that mean you're gonna stop um participating I mean are you gonna cancel being uh already you've already started i've already started canceling my plans with um the big insurance companies I have eliminated um two dc medicaid plans um and I eliminated those plans because I wanted to make a statement during a time when people are in crisis how dare you put patients in a position to have to pay for services but then on the flip side how dare you put the doctors in a position where they can't pay their bills you want us to see these patients but the reimbursement rate is so low how can there has to be a media and so when the one the two insurance companies didn't hear me when I was saying everything is going up you're only paying me fifty dollars to go into this office to see this patient but the reality is it's costing me two 200. can you help me out send me ppe send me you know send me something to help me out only one insurance dc medicaid administrator heard my concern and was like what do we got to do to make sure Dr Preston keeps doing what she's doing because if you don't have what you need how can you treat the people so yeah I’m doing away with um the private i've already started I can't continue to allow the big insurance companies to make all this money and then don't feel like they need to take care of their providers and their patients oh come on the delta ceos they only make about a million dollars a year exactly and that's what I see while they're sitting over there getting their six figure income consistently doing a pandemic I’m going and working for pennies on a dollar putting my life on the line for your patience or shall I say your clients because they're my patients so it became a bit much it became a bit much wow um it's uh these are just these are just horrible times I mean I like what you said it just is what it is I always liked to poem uh growing up uh everybody always says it was uh mother teresa wrote it but uh she absolutely did not write it um it was uh written by um Kent m Keith and it was um it was called uh living the paradoxical commandments but you know it is that the uh the anyway deal people are often unreasonable irrational and self-centered forgive them anyway if you are kind people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives be kind anyway if you are successful you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies succeed anyway if you are honest and sincere people may deceive you be honest and sincere anyway what you spend years creating others could destroy overnight create anyway if you find serenity and happiness some may be jealous be happy anyway the good you do today will often be forgotten do good anyway give the best you have and it may never be enough give your best anyway and these are challenging times because you got to really look internally I mean I mean it's easy to do it when your kids are 2 4 6 and 8 because they don't know any better you have to swallow some pride when they're doing it in your 30s that's why I said you know if mine um you know that um you know you just have to uh like my mother's 82. so she's turning into a child again you know and it just it just is what it is but uh how are you holding up how are you doing I’ll be the first to tell anyone this is challenging for me I am a single woman no kids no husband no significant other you can just say genius you don't have to say single not married no kid just say I’m a genius well the number one cause of divorce is marriage and if you want any type of financial planning have no children you don't save for college you don't have kids I mean uh I just wish one financial planner would say the truth never get married and don't have any kids end of lesson so you're a genius I agree with the never get married part okay and I’m a little biased I said listen we'll just we're just gonna take this old school we're gonna have to take a vow before god to love each other we're not getting uncle sam involved okay done that but I will say I do want children one of these days you know I want them because that's my legacy I didn't do all of this for nothing that's my lineage and so yeah I want someone or some beings to leave this to but I don't necessarily have to have the husband for that but being a single person doing covet it hasn't been easy and so I have relied heavily on my really good friends to hear me when I vent and when I need to cry because generally I just don't think people get it this is not easy and especially when you got to go through it alone oh baby i wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy we're talking then what time are we going to talk about relationships this has just not been easy and so but I will say the flip side being single without all the extra baggage I felt like that made me the perfect candidate to serve which is why I didn't have a problem going into my office and seeing patients and making myself available because I was like well I have no one to run home to I don't have any kids already so if something happens to me well I’ll just say it was the lord's work it was my time but as we can see I’m still here well you know the funniest way to prove that marriage is just an absolute criminal racket is just say to your lover say hey let's not get married to the united states let's go down to aruba and get married um because then it's not legally binding in the united states and like no I want to get married in the 14th district court of America of the united states it's a I mean I mean it's just amazing I mean imagine telling your best friend hey if you if you want to um watch football with me for the rest of your life uh every uh game you're we're gonna have to get married and if you uh decide to watch the game with someone else uh you're gonna have to give me your big screen tv and four bottles of jameson I mean it's just uh I do I think I do I think it's a complete racket because I because I know so many dentists that are struggling and they're trying to do this and they're trying to do that and you look at their overhead and they're paying five thousand dollars a month to some person they used to have sex with five years ago it's like what the hell is that what's that about well we actually tied the knot and got married do you have any kids no uh does she have a job no would you what could you do with that five thousand dollars a month here hire a productive employee that actually made I mean we only have goods and services so make me a sandwich or cut my hair but you just can't sit there on the couch and demand five thousand dollars a month because um of the marriage racket I think a good way to jump start the whole economy would be to null and void all um of my homies uh um what do you call it um uh alimony payments yeah just we ain't got time for this [ __ ] no more I mean talk about getting reelected why isn't someone campaigning on I will cancel all alimony if you vote for me I mean uh but anyway uh we're getting sidetracked um but what do you um no when I talked to the um when I podcast the president of the ada uh chad um and I thought he asked him I said well what's got your attention mostly right now and then he goes the rising suicide rate and there's a threat on dental town for suicide and it and a threat on what you were talking about uh we even start a new forum for the single dentist um it's a um god I forgot what it's called but anyway yeah it's for a single dentist because that's what people are reporting that they're single dentists living alone and it's just a [ __ ] being alone during a pandemic I mean I don't care what that person looked like you'd have to be you'd have to be drinking to go kiss a stranger uh in the middle of a pandemic right that's exactly what this is like I refuse to date I refuse to cohabitate I’m like I’m good I’m so good I was like if okay if you think I’m crazy I won't date a guy unless I inspect his mouth [Laughter] that was that uh what made you become a dentist or is that something you learned after becoming a dentist when in your journey did you arrive at this ah it did not make me become a dentist but I realized the correlation when I was in my probably my teens you know I realized like I was I would pay attention to you know the guy's teeth and if I like their teeth like oh was the last time you went to the dentist you know I would ask those weird questions and so now of course since i've been in the dental industry for about 20 years i've been a dentist for 12 years but i've been in the industry for 20 years i've just always been like I need to see so if I’m anal about your mouth you think I’m just going to go out with you and I don't know what your covet status is are you crazy I jokingly tell people I said listen you can't afford me right now you can't afford me for multiple reasons first of all I’m just high I’m high liability but I need you to understand that if you get me sick you're paying you're paying you're paying alimony you're paying support not on the money but you're paying support times for you got to pay for all my staff members me and my shuttle bus driver why because my shuttle bus driver takes care of me every day so unless you can afford to pay for four people you can't date me [Laughter] so do um do you think do you see a lot of more single people in your age group I mean you know at the end of uh world war ii it was like four and a half kids per family now it's dropped to two in fact that you talk about the population explosion as a country's when eighty percent of the women do not graduate from high school you have like four and a half plus kids and when 80 percent do graduate from high school it plummets down to under the replacement I mean the average family has to make 2.3 kids just to break even and now they're saying that the population will never hit 10 billion in fact before it maxes out it's gonna start seriously contracting you already got countries like japan where every morning they have less people on the island than the day before and economically that's weird to look at macroeconomics in a shrinking public I mean it's real easy to grow an economy when everybody's having babies and they don't have washers and dryers and baby beds but man to grow your business and a shrinking number of people do you see a lot more single unmarried not having children now than say of um you know the generation uh that went before you yeah yes and I think covert is not going to help I see that more now than ever you know that was one of the things that I actually that's why I’m so excited that I’m now able to see everybody because I get to talk to my patients that I know are single and find out like how did they survive during covet you know what are they doing to mix and mingle you know how are they meeting people what's the strategy now because whatever we had as a norm before it's not there we can't our lounges are closed in dc our clubs are closed and the way the restaurants are set up you can't even sit at the bar to meet somebody you know so you and if you if you say you need a table they're gonna sit you at a table that's designed for two so you're looking like the lonely heart you know and nobody gets to see you so it's not any fun at all not any fun at all so when you think about all of that there's so many single people they're not able to match up so I do believe that the population is going to go down I do believe that they're not gonna be as many babies because people are not able to link up and then believe it or not people it looks like on the news people are being free but I’m here to tell you in dc people are not behaving as freely as the media would want you to believe people are genuinely timid they're afraid they're afraid we're like no where's your mask where's your mouth well it's a really interesting phenomenon how you can film everybody has a camera like when I was little um you know it you had to save a long time to go buy some film and it was either a 12 or 24. you put it in a camera it was very rare you'd hardly take any pictures and then you'd have to go get developed that would take two weeks and then you get the pictures back and half of more duds but now everybody's got the world's best camera right on their phone and um so you can take a picture or film an event eight billion people on earth and there's just this little bitty event but it goes viral and the whole world thinks the whole world is doing that and they make money off of um uh news is entert just uh it's just trying to um steal your time so you can view a commercial but it is it is really a distorted reality we live in because you no longer know what's real or what's fake I mean the one the line between real and fake is uh really uh dissolving so where what how is how does it look for you like today like what what's your this week look like for you are you open for business are you seeing patients uh what are your hours monday through monday through thursday from 8 30 to 5 30 then on fridays where it's from seven in the morning to 1 p.m yeah and um is and is um is it steady I mean where are you up percentage-wise before the pandemic I mean are you half your revenue two thirds that's interesting I’m glad you asked the question about revenue because when it comes to revenue I am at half my revenue when it comes to the number of patients that I’m seeing it's the exact same it's the exact same so you're seeing the same number of people for half the money yep because what's happening the people that I had to put off for those technically four months that we were closed they're now rushing to get in to get all their cleanings and stuff done um and then the patients that want to come in because it's not I’m booked a month out so they have to wait to get the work done that they need to get done or if we get a cancellation or able to get in I’m not making as much money as I was before because I’m playing catch up with those patients that I had to neglect when I was forced to close okay but why are you booked a month up why are you booked a month in advance we were closed three months people wanted to get in once they found out I was back home my gosh I’m gonna I’m gonna uh name this episode uh howard takes issue with takisha oh my gosh she's booked a month in advance I’m changing her name to take issue from takisha to issue so why are you booked a month in advance and um how could you fix that or how could you solve that or what's that all about I could solve that if I had more income to hire new people the funny part is I knew once covet was over or we were allowed to see more I needed to get a hygienist and to talk about what you were mentioning earlier they don't want to work they're afraid they're scared and if you don't know me already and you don't know how I run my practice it's hard to get new people to come in and to buy into I don't care if they talk to the people that are already there I don't care if they talk to some of my patients the media has them scared straight or shall I say scared jobless or scared to the point where they're comfortable on unemployment and so people do not want to work so the way my motto that I because I knew I mean if you shut down for three months I knew that there was going to be a need for those patients once I got back open if the revenue was there and the desire to go back to work by some you know branches of dentistry was there I need help I’m booked out because it's just me and my team my regular team we need new people but here's the problem it takes money to hire new people and even if we got the money the problem would be can we convince them that their that it's actually safe I personally believe it's safe but can I convince someone that's been sitting at home reading all these articles to believe that it is safe to be in a dental setting and that I’m going to make sure that they're safe that's what why I am booked a whole month out because I don't have help if there were a hundred uh people who work in dental offices in dc like high genesis systems or sometimes what percent would you say um are scared and don't want to come back to work because they think they're going to catch covid I mean did it was it didn't shrink it 10 20 I think it's more than that you know just on an informal basis I don't have the data in front of me but just from speaking with my colleagues I want to say about 20 or 30. I was very blessed in the sense that I had the structure in place that they were recommending but like a few of my really good friends that had practices where they were like working multiple patients at a time they are suffering two of my friends will not be able to open their practices back up they're filing bankruptcy so it's hard it's just I think the only thing that helped me was that I had already had a structure in place that was I guess covet ready right so usually dentistry has been divided into a high fee low volume or low fee high volume and um the low fee high volume is really changed when you got to dress up like you're going to do a moon walk just to go do a hygiene I mean it used to be for me uh I numb up this patient then jump in another room see the crown go over here do a hygiene check and then ju I mean I can't jump four rooms nobody in ten minutes nobody can do that nobody can do that and that and that's the problem I can tell you one day I tried that right I said I set it up where I said okay because something's gonna have to get I put a whole outfit whole ppp outfit for this one patient outside that door then I put a whole ppp outfit for one patient outside another door I put on tank top and leggings right an outfit that would not get me in trouble so that when I’m getting undressed in the hallway no one would say what is she doing right so I have my leggings in my tank top and I go to put on all the ppe to go into the one room and they tell me okay dr preston you're needed and I’ll too so I take everything off I step outside the room and I take everything off to go get undressed I have my staff like spray me down in this sanitizing stuff then I walk over to the other room and I put everything on and sorry about that and then I try to go into the other room and I realize oh no this is too much my ocd couldn't handle it like my anxiety you begin to wonder like did you bring something into the room did you not do something good you know did you do what was best for your patient did you do what was best for your staff nobody can do that that getting undressed and then you know those masks we wear nowadays don't help us breathe well you can't breathe in those I’m used to the surgical mask the new kn95 or the n95 like I literally I had this strategy I said okay I’m gonna get the k the um the half face respirators per room it doesn't work I tried it a couple of my colleagues because we were like okay if this works this is what we're gonna do we did it does not work and that's why I say I’m just grateful that I already had a plan in place where unfortunately we are gonna have to focus on one patient at a time that's going to be the new norm and can I tell you I’m kind of grateful for that because it allows us to get back to how dentistry used to be about the patient um Washington dc's got um it's saying right now that um last testament five million three hundred and twenty two thousand people um what percent of dc um is like so many people in Arizona where they think this is insane it's just the flu it just kills some old people in the winter it's a complete insane overreaction and they don't care they'll go back to any dental office today in phoenix that's doing it just like it was versus what percent is literally thinks this virus is serious does not want to get it does not want to die does not want it blah blah so break up dc uh into two dc's if I had to guess I think it's only 20 of the population I think this is a joke only 20 thinks it's a joke yes I would say 20 so four out of five people respect the virus but here's the thing so when we talk about dc we got to be mindful of what's going on right now dc is dc is heavy in gentrification heavy into gentrification yes back then it was majority when I was growing up dc was my dark majority black it was majority people of color it was a very diverse city but it diverse in terms of cultures meaning we had people from other countries but it was still majority black now that dc is gentrified what I mean what I’m finding is the latest census report told us that there are way more white people in dc than they were before and the people that particularly appear to be not taken as serious are the people of color and it's mainly because of lack of education on the topic lack of um lack of trust for the medical community lack of support you know there's so many different things that are going on in dc right now we can talk about how like a majority of the black people live east of the river and east of the river they only have one grocery store we could talk about how east of the river they don't even have a hospital that will deliver babies all the people east of the river when I’m telling you that the majority east of the river is black must come all the way west of the river to have a baby which is why we have a high birth mortality rate in dc so when you look at the population of people that are not taking it seriously it's because they have a reason to not trust the system and so then when they see the data that says more of them are dying they think that it's just the media misconstruing facts it is not until they see people like me that are like no this is real I look like you so I’m telling you I’m not telling you this because I’m getting paid to tell you this I’m telling you this because it's a fact there are people like us that are being affected and we need to be more aware and get tested you know we need to wear the mask like take this seriously I understand we want our social lives back but this isn't something to play with because I could be in that one percent that ends up big you could be in that one percent that ends up dead I would like to be in that 60 um that if you end up getting it no what is it what was I think the last report said only one percent of the population if you end up getting it you want to be able to bounce back from it I’m from that era where I grew up with chickenpox did you get chickenpox growing up had it multiple times and so I’m not saying that you need to catch it so that you know you get that that hurt immunity thing I’m not here to promote that but I will say that I want to be in that population that if I get it I survive I thank god I mean not with some wood you know we haven't had to deal with any positive results with my staff and my team and I but with education people need to know that this is something that should be taken seriously so that if it just so happens you end up getting that um positive results the odds are in your favor for speedy recovery let me go back just to a little anat geometry our geology are you talking about the Anacostia river or the potamic river Anacostia that's right baby so you're so you're saying east of that river is where most of Washington dc's um black people live is it more proper to say people of color than black people um no you can say black people I say poor color because what we have found when I was growing up in dc in the um in the 80s and the 90s um the Latino population was up northwest so that's why I was saying dc was always majority well it wouldn't say always it was majority black but we always had other cultures present we had a thriving Hispanic community you know um people from other nations but with gentrification the Latino population that was up northwest was displaced and so now east of the river is full of people of color not just blacks so gentrification is um the problem with gentrification is when they start to go in money starts flowing into a poor community and they start fixing it up and all that kind of stuff it runs out all the housing for the poor and so as is when someone says I’m going to leave the suburb and go downtown san Francisco and fix this old house well that old house used to be um poor uh lower-cost housing for the poor it all comes down to zoning laws and you have this historic society it's really an irrational hysterical society and the entire state of Texas has no zoning laws you could buy a house and tear it down and build the empire state building and so when you hear all this belonging oh my god what are we gonna do about the poor in san Francisco okay well you know it was all created by the government mob through all their laws and regulations and [ __ ] so what the mob does is they completely ruin something until you're just so brokenhearted you go back to the same people and ask them to help you fix it it's like no they screwed the whole thing up and the only solution isn't changing more laws and regulations is just to get rid of all zoning like Washington d like Washington sees like you can't build anything it blocks the view of that what is that that phallic statue in the middle that big that big phallic thing sticking up in the middle of the deal I mean really so and this is and this is why I can't stand the mob because it's always people who have a lot of options that decide to take away an option from a guy that that may be his only option why is it that people with 10 options all they can do is take away the one option for my homie you know what I mean and I don't care if that phallic thing can be seen or not um just get the government is the problem and what scares me the most of millennials is they oh I mean it's like they're it's like the government is their mama with a bottle and they're nursing them and it's like mommy can you fix this no mommy um is a really bad mobster okay and she created all these problems so let's not go to mommy government to fix it let's see how we can undo the whole government thing I mean less government is the answer not more government but I like dc you know I’ll tell you truth out of all the cities I go to me good god the monuments the museums the restaurants I mean the natural museum of history you could spend two days at each one and there's like seven of them I mean there's just no stopping all of our museums are free they're for the people and you have the only hotel that actually has a rocking chair like people always call me well how is your room it's like what do you mean how's my room if you see my house I’m in a hotel it doesn't even have a rocking chair well anyway there's this city um there's a city by um it's uh what's the city it's uh where they dress up and pretend there are old characters walking around the street williamsburg that hotel there they have rocking chairs on the patio just like the grandma had the big old wooden rocking chair I’m like really I mean uh really I think it's just the greatest town to visit and travel I mean do you like it I mean that's all you've known really you see dc's home for me um the interesting part is I did go away for four years to Ohio delaware Ohio I tell anybody that it was what I needed I knew that if I was an environment where I was able to party and do a whole bunch of stuff I probably would not have finished and so I needed that that that that structure of a small town setting and a small school and so when I actually lived over in spain I think that I lived inside I attended university of salamanca which is in salamanca spain and I can tell you I did a lot of partying while I was over there so I learned very quickly that you know partying doesn't necessarily work for me when it comes time to be successful in the education side d.c came back yes it's home would I live somewhere else absolutely but it's nice being able to tell people I know what it used to be and I wanted to just make one comment about what you stated with the with the politicians and just getting stuff together again I know we're not supposed to talk about it I don't understand dc has a rule where it says that any new building that goes up must have 20 percent of the housing must be for affordable uh must have affordable units and if the cost of living in dc or the medium income is 80 or 90 000 I don't know who they think or where they think people are making that type of money east of the river but if the median income is 80 to 90 000 but the average black person in dc makes 40 000 how can they afford to be in those affordable housing units the government our local council mayor all of them put that in place my patient said something wise to me over the last couple weeks and it's been resonating it's been um hitting home with me I don't watch any sports other than ufc I’m a ufc girl throwing through we can talk about that till we blow in the face but if you talk about nba usc no you said you're usc oh ufc baby oh you saying ufc or usa ufc ultimate fighting club oh my god so oh my god isn't that amazing did you ever I mean did you ever think when you when I was growing up the greatest event was always whoever always gonna fight shavers whoever it was did you ever think something would trump uh boxing from the days of ali and shavers and all those guys and then and then the ufc and oh my god joe rogan those guys so you're a big uh um ufc fan I’m a huge ufc fan I am known for flying all over the country just to go see a ufc fan who's your favorite fighter aleister overeem aleister overeem yeah I like heavyweight I’m biased ufc alvister you gotta like anderson silva you know he's just a legend albuster how do you say his last name anderson silva or no alvister aleister a-l-I-s-t-a-I-r ovary huh let's see if our google can find them oh I’ll uh out a star overeem oh my god what a beast love that guy and he's from london you fell for the accent really you just fell you went I did I fell for it oh I we have jon jones if he can just stay out of trouble but I love me some jon jones and you know he comes from a family of athletes both of his brothers play you know in the nfl one has a um a super bowl ring you know so when it comes to ufc I can talk about it all day every day but I know nothing about the nba nhl what is the other one nba and well the nba so here's the thing this is what my patient said to me he said doc if you don't think lebron james and um the wayne wade and hardin and all of them are partying and drinking doing together during the off season you're a fool I said what do you mean by that he said you need to look at the lakers and the houston rockets I said okay I don't watch those but I I’m with you he said you need to look at the lakers and the houston rockets like the democrats and the republicans again I know we're not supposed to talk about these things but he said they make decisions for us but if you think that in the off time they may victor and fight while they're on the court you know and they're out to see who can actually win the people but if you think in the off season they're not hanging out on their yacht together you're the fool when he said that to me I had an aha [Music] aha until people in congress or your representatives start to look and behave more like you and I will never fully be represented I don't care what party you belong to at the end of the day we need people that are genuinely looking at the best interest of the people period and when but when my patients said that to me I was like wait I didn't think about it that way so while we're all fighting each other because I’m a die-hard [ __ ] fan and you're a dallas cowboy fan you know at the end of the day it doesn't matter they're best friends in the off season yeah but you know when you look at the universe 85 of all the stars are binary stars and the republicans and democrats have been a binary star going the same direction for 150 years one robbed the bank one drove the getaway car there's the largest party in America is the non-voters and they don't vote because they know it's a sham I mean well I’m supposed to die for democracy so that every four years I could get a pick between voting for an elephant and a donkey's ass really that's democracy and then and then the independent my libertarian I’m a registered libertarian my registered libertarian joe jorgeson she can't get she's a doctor and can't get on any of the base because you have to have 15 percent of who whose rules are these and the reason she won't be on a debate is because we have a binary star system like 85 percent of those stars and off season when they're not on the camera they're drinking the same kool-aid and the kool-aid is that the voters are the workers and the rich wall street um that you know the jeff bezos whose wealth fluctuates several billion dollars a day they're just employees for those guys I mean um you know and people who are you know when they're young they still believe in truth liberty and justice in the American way and when they get 58 years old and your four boys have turned into six grand grandkids it's the biggest scam on earth and um and at the end of the day I can only tell you what's gonna happen the poor will get poorer and the rich will get richer which is a cool game because it works for me I’m on the rich side okay but you know but when you get really old you realize well I ain't taking any of this with me and I’m worried about my six grandkids like the day that eugene died my six granddaughter evelyn was born so you know out with uh the old and with the new so I’m mostly worried about the next generation as far as trying to stay in the present I’m only mostly worried about that kids that just got out of school so that's why my next question for you what advice would you give to the covid class of 2000 she just graduated three months ago four hundred thousand in debt she thought she was gonna be a dentist an American make some money and now she's 400 000 in debt and her government even though the constitution gives us bankruptcy protection you can't bankrupt student loans yeah so we went through this we went through this 500 years ago around the world where you'd go to debtors prison and our constitution said no more debtors prison you have the right to bankruptcy and even with 50 000 suicides a year your congressman and your senator still will not let you bankrupt your student loans so she's got four hundred thousand dollars student loans and mel pandemic talk to her my advice to her whatever you thought you had in mind it's not that it's not that it is not going to happen um if I would have known that this was coming get you a regular job define what regular means to you and then what I’m tongue tied what does that mean to me peace of mind I cannot be in a corporate setting get you a regular job and start to save your money pair the bed pay the bare minimum on your student loans because you have 30 years to pay that off find ways to strategically get your student loans paid off meaning if you have to humble yourself and take the hundred and something thousand dollars and then get the long repayment money do it because guess what nothing is going to happen fast over the next six years the money that we were making before we're not gonna make it so what nat what time is better than now than to serve and get paid to serve I actually can admit I was one of those people as much as I like to serve I was determined not to go and do one of those loan repayment programs I was like oh no I want to do implants I want to do this I want to do that I am not going and working in idaho for a hundred thousand dollars while the world is trying to figure itself out now is the best time to go serve there that way you have stacked your paper for the life for the next five years or four years so that when we have this thing figured out you can emerge and open your own practice buy into a practice do whatever you feel like you need because at this point the norm will be established and you will be financially stable now is not the time to go buy anything think about some things I wouldn't even buy stock I would be watching things you know but if I could do it all over if you just got out of school you got your 400 000 that you need to pay off look at avenues of how you can get those loans to work for you do not be in a hurry to go work for someone else because the bottom line is everything is still being developed we're still in the middle pandemic and it's going to take years before they establish this norm years you have time I think I think I think not just was 2020 dead on arrival the year I think the decade was dead on arrival I think 2020 the decade till 2030 I mean I don't see the I mean my gosh just 10 years ago we had lehman's day and we had that big meltdown and that meltdown would be like um my god roy jones uh just uh sweeping your foot out this coronavirus was the one two punch I um but I want to ask you another question I would tell my colleague too now is the time when you can tap into your other skills you better have multiple streams of income the day and age of us just being dentists no longer exists you don't have to be that so if you were interested in doing a podcast if you were interested in having a clothing line starting your own toothbrush line starting your own um whitening line now is the time to do your research and do those things because having just that one income is still not going to work so use this time even though you have your 400 000 in debt use this time to plan as I call it dream plan and execute dream about what you think you want to do plan it out and then execute because all right well then tonight I’m going to start my cannabis mouthwash project that i've been thinking about for a long time because I really think cannabis mouthwash will kill germs that cause bad breath I don't know what she will it won't but I’m gonna tell you this much five years ago I wasn't thinking about learning about cannabis because they had us convinced oh no it's so taboo guess what there's so many it's a huge industry that just showed up five years ago we need to know what's going on and if we can be involved with it even directly or indirectly because if I see one more cbd vitamin rub or cbd something that's so-called gonna help somebody I want to be able to explain to my patients is this really beneficial or is this just the latest crop like the charcoal toothpaste yeah I said it yeah ah yeah again you just gave another um you know cbd infused mouthwash and I’m sitting here in Arizona with patients whose children are doing decades in prison for marijuana and now we sell the well now we have dispensaries and you can actually get cbd infused mouthwash okay but why are there still people locked up in cages for doing something that's now we're talking about hell we're gonna make a cannabis mouthwash I mean it's just the management the management is so incompetent because people won't take a stand I feel like until it comes directly to your community and becomes a problem in your community then it becomes a national problem there are more but this black lives matter movement has so many arms it's not just about police brutality it's about the fact that there is a mass incarceration problem in this country with people of color for crimes that are now being committed that are legal why are you still holding these people behind bars so people are protesting hoping that they can get these congressmen and women council members depends on how your state is being ran you know governors to understand that you have if you have legalized these things all of these people need to be set free you have no legal reason to leave these people behind bars so why are they so why are they left behind bars because they don't want to have to pay restitution because it's a jobs program and prison system is a big business system all right money is the answer what's the question money in that business so it's one or two is I say it's both things you don't want to have to pay the people that you locked up and you don't want to lose the money on a system that you created that is a billion dollar system so either way there will be money lost and they'd much rather keep their money than to be accountable yeah I mean again I mean uh and then and then even go to the opioid epidemic the opioid epidemic okay so they make all these laws that you can't um go to the dentist and get a prescription vicodin in a program without all this and paperwork and everything and they just make it completely impossible to get a medical grade opium so what are the poor and the addicted suffering from mental illness and addiction and poverty have to do they have to go buy it off the street where it's made with in a bathtub and then they talk about oh this poor pandemic effect yeah poor pandemic so that the dea can have 50 000 people that live this great job and have all these benefits and then lock them up and put them on all these jails more jobs it's all job creation and then they act like oh it's so sad that 50 000 people have died no you killed 50 000 people because they couldn't go to Walgreens and buy it they had to buy it out of a bathtub and you're not about to close down the dea and cancel all their pensions you're not about to close down you know I mean this country has more people in prison than any country on earth I mean Mao de sung and Stalin never had three million people in prison and it's such a scam what's hard for me is just to keep my four boys and my brother he went to Sydney Australia and it's like and I won't leave it's like no I will stay here and fight the fight and turn I’m not gonna shove it under a rug or go someone else I tell my boys you loved being born in phoenix you had all these roads and bridges and highways and telephones and your job is to make it better for the next generation but my god it's just so it's just so um challenging that I have to read that um poem anyway to myself every morning it's like the I feel like I feel like I live on the planet bat [ __ ] crazy you know what I mean and uh I just wish bat [ __ ] could just be a little less crazy then I’m the ultimate star are you but you're a binary star who are you who are you circling with I gotta why don't we just be we'll start the binary dental star association and we can just spin off into the universe uh bitching and moaning and complaining but then like but then I tell my boys I said you know you can [ __ ] and complain and moan all night long but then in the morning when you wake up that problem is still going to be right there at 8 o'clock so what is the long term solution and what I like you're doing is lowering expectations because nothing's going to be fixed in an hour or a day I mean my god I can remember in the seventh grade when they told us that the telephones we have that we would be able to see the person on the other side because they were going to combine the tv and the telephone well it all came true but I was told that like 10 and it actually happened at like 50. so it took like 40 years to just do that little thing you know of putting those two things together uh I can't believe that uh in America they had silent movies and the phonograph for 40 years before one person thought maybe we should add that together and i don't even want to tell you how long it took to add chocolate to peanut butter I mean they should have just come up with that the first day so things just moves as slow as glaciers and it's hard to stay motivated when everything just takes so long because people are so crazy I agree no I agree I just think at some point I understand that not everyone is going to be an activist and um not everyone is going to be an advocate if you're not willing to be an activist I always tell people try to be an advocate for yourself but if you're gonna advocate for things do your research on what you're advocating towards don't go and complain without having the data or references to back it up period you know we can bring about change like you said look how long it took for them to bring those items together right but all it took was for one person to come up with the plan and he had to get a few people to believe in the execution so all it takes is you get you have the plan for how you think you can bring about the change if we get enough people that are just willing to back it up hence advocate I don't I’m not I am not your typical advocate you know activist I will not be the one that's standing and protesting with the sign and putting my life on the line that's not what I do I’m behind the scenes but again just because I’m not a forefront activist does not mean I’m not a behind the scenes activist which makes me more an advocate for change I’ll do what needs to be done if I got to write letters if I have to call my council members and complain which is what I did during covet because I just didn't like the way I was treated I didn't like how you know people lost their jobs and you tell them that they still have to pay their rent here in dc you told the residents that you don't have to pay late fees and your landlord cannot evict you but here's the problem after three months the landlords were given permission to eviction dc city council had to have an emergency meeting to overturn that ruling because they knew people were being evicted the minute on June July 1 landlords were in court how do you do that to people but I saw that that was going to be a problem I kept saying forgiveness how can people give you something that they don't have at the bare minimum ask people to pay for the electricity ask them to pay for you know their water figure out what their income source is let people be accountable so that you can assist them but to not provide any assistance and then you have all these people on the street and you're wondering how you're going to feed them and you're like oh well not my problem that's not the solution and so we need more people that are willing to be advocates for change doesn't necessarily have to be activism advocates for change I am and they just have no imagination like um I’ll remember um my gosh um oh I gotta go back I’m not remembering it um but it was during um it was during the great depression when uh the u.s president passed the law I think it was in like 1933 or 1932 or something and I mean we were in the middle of a great depression he just refinanced everybody's house in one law he wasn't gonna wait till Shirley and howard and Paul went to their bank and everybody was you know just chaos he said I’ll show you how to refinance your house and he refinanced them all in one law again you just you have so many examples of uh of enough people back in time or white or whatever where you know again I just think eighty percent of the uh eight billion humans live at least eighty percent live under incompetent management um but uh I can't believe uh we're I supposed to talk to you hour we're an hour and a half but I just got I still got one final question that I take issue with takisha not only no she's um but seriously you know you just gotta live underneath your means you can't spend more than you have do you think dentists physicians and lawyers have a ongoing problem of spending more money than they make as opposed when I go to small town poor Kansas it's like they save more money and they cook you know they just live below their means but it seems like do you think dentists and physicians and lawyer let's just say with that do you think dentists have a problem with living above their means more than the regular people yes I do yeah yes I do and here's the problem society convinced us that there was going to be wealth with medicine with those professions that you just mentioned if I became a doctor I was going to have money the problem was when during your time or you know you first decided to be a dentist the cost of education was a hell of a lot cheaper it was a cash industry it wasn't insurance driven so you guys were making money and so you could make the money and buy the real estate and buy all the different things right let's fast forward 20 years later 30 years later our industry now somehow or another we allowed it to become insurance driven the cost of education has skyrocketed but all we remember is if you were a doctor you got to have the land rover if you are a doctor you got to have the Porsche so the problem is we're living in the past and then also we've worked our butts off we want just something tangible to make it look like we have the part but here's the problem in being as we call it house rich pocket poor and being house rich in looking the part we're contributing to society believing that we are wealthy there's a small percentage of professionals that are wealthy in our profession a small percentage the rest of us are just trying to figure it out so I do believe we do live outside of our means but you need to have a plan and I even like look at my practice I put everything on the line to open up my practice I came up with a plan I came up with a five-year debt-free plan people see me living and I’m like oh no you don't realize those are the luxuries that I bought before I decided to open my practice I’m living below my means if I was living above my means when covett came my practice would be in bankruptcy I build my practice out because I was smart with the money I did not get the support that was needed from the system now unfortunately that affected my five-year plan but guess what at least I’m not filing bankruptcy and I had enough sense to say because in my head get rid of all of this debt in five years so that in five years if I’m making [Music] eighty thousand dollars a month ninety thousand twenty thousand it's mine I don't answer to png I don't answer to you know bank of America I don't answer to any of those financial institutions so yes we do live outside our means and now is the time for us to start looking and being the part of broke it's okay say you don't have it even if you got it say you don't have one yeah and can't you said big house little pocket or somebody said big house little pocket yeah in Kansas we'd say big hat no cattle you know big old cowboy hat no cattle and um yeah so um take it from uh Astaire overeem did I say his name right as Olly’s there always there what does he just go by ollie yes so just be like ollie and knock out the spending man you just you just and I say this and they look at me funny but like around here like I know their dad you know what I mean and I’m like okay you just come out dental school four hundred thousand dollars go back and live with your mom or dad and you can live for free and they're just like well I don't want to do that well I don't think six million people wanted to be shipped off to world war ii I think some of those guys in the boats were like um i'd actually like to turn around and go back I mean I don't care what you like I mean you're 400 000 in debt you're in the middle of a pandemic jobs have disappeared for associate dentists with no experience and your dad is a freaking dentist and I know he's got extra rooms because i've passed out in him before just go sleep in one of those beds you know what I mean but I cannot tell you this is so funny because I literally had this conversation with one of my really good friends yesterday my testimony I actually live with my dad for my first seven years as a dentist I left my dad once I decided to get married I’m happily divorced but I left once and so what people don't realize like you said you have all this debt my parents understood I had a lot of debt and they afforded me the opportunity to what stack my paper and get my debt down and if they told me to pay them a thousand dollars or whatever they wanted I knew that was nothing compared to what I was making because they understood I had a plan so I’m with you I am a huge advocate for staying with your parents staying with any relative or getting roommates finding a way to minimize your overall expenses so that you can save to be debt-free because I’m telling you what you don't know is that in our profession it's designed to keep adding on debt they will keep giving us debt oh the practice needs a new pan machine well guess what the pan machine is a hundred thousand oh the practice needs new chairs those chairs are 50 000. [Music] our profession is designed and again you want to talk about you know just the government but I feel like the dental vendors that run our industry and I don't know if you have any sponsors I’m sorry if I’m going to offend them but they all be ashamed of themselves they ought to be because they know that they are in control of things and so they set they set our equipment and our supplies at ridiculously high prices knowing guess what we can get the credit to get it they know that it doesn't make sense yeah but i just want to say one thing to clarify you said you hope I don't use sponsors my I have a media company in the magazine and they keep a yearly list of all the ads I ruined by either saying something in my lecture my column now my podcast so they call me the anti salesman so yeah I mean uh because like dude we had we had this in the works they wanted to do an ad then look what you said and I said well you know what I’m not lying to my homies and I mean I’m in town truth and by the way you know they don't want to go home and live with their parents you realize that I lived with my identical twin brother for four months until um I just couldn't take anymore and I ate him it was in the womb we weren't born yet you know I ate my twin brother in the womb but I did what I had to do I had to make room and there was yeah but hey I could talk to you forever um thank you so much for coming on the show and uh my god you went uh my god we almost talked for two hours but really I just loved your um your honesty and I mean you're just you you're I’m dentistry uncensored and you're no holds barred I mean if takisha thinks it she's gonna say it and thank you so much for coming on the show and giving me two hours of your honest life and I can't wait till this pandemic is gone so we can go uh um try to drink our way across the river we'll try to we'll try to row across the potamic while drinking jameson yeah for that I’m known for a good cocktail all right all right well you got to make me one I’ll that's a promise all right thanks so much for coming on the show it was my pleasure thank you so much for having me okay remember if you have a daughter you have to name her take issue with that's gonna be her nickname and I’m gonna the founder of howard university they named it after me don't forget that part either all right have a great day I gotta run thanks to you sweetie bye now

Category: Paradental and Infection Control, Practice Management, HR and Accounting, Public Health

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How to perform dentistry faster, easier, higher in quality and lower in cost. Subscribe to the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dentistry-uncensored-with-howard-farran/id916907356
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Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran
How to perform dentistry faster, easier, higher in quality and lower in cost. Subscribe to the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dentistry-uncensored-with-howard-farran/id916907356
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