Why are dental prosthetic fees commonly undercharged across the profession? Because patients are conditioned to believe surgery costs more than prosthetics, and dentists have internalized the same backward intuition rather than charging based on actual time, complexity, lab cost, and overhead. The clinical reality is the opposite of the patient assumption. Surgical placement of an implant is a clinically demanding but relatively contained procedure. The fee that supports it is generally well-calibrated across the profession. The prosthetic phase that follows is dramatically more involved. It takes more chair time across multiple visits, requires sophisticated laboratory work with its own labor and [...]