Happy Holidays everyone. I gave my daughters a Wii and Wii Fit for Christmas. Wii has a newsfeed on it that takes national news from the internet via a WiFi connection. Guess what one of the articles on Christmas day was about?

A foreign trained dentist name Carlos Flores was caught running a dental clinic in Peekskill, NY in his kitchen. On top of this, Carlos claims to be a licensed orthodontist in Ecuador. You can find the article here. When I was a kid growing up in a Filipino community in the 1970s, I vaguely remember visiting a Filipino dentist in his home. Not sure if he was licensed or not or who he was. Within our own cultural communities, we would go to these folks. Their reputations would be passed on by word of mouth. Never had a problem.

There's a reason why stories like this come out. First, there are no practical paths for foreign trained dentists to follow - just steep climbs to legitimacy with a disproportiantely smaller value proposition. Second, there are communities in need who can not afford to pay sometimes steep fees. My last trip to an American dentist was more than 15 years ago. In the one visit even though I had insurance, I was charged $200 out of pocket for teeth cleaning. I was also x-rayed. The dentist warned me of impacted molars. He alerted me that they were abscesses waiting to happen. Fifteen years later, I am still waiting for it.

Please post your stories in our forum - especially if you are a licensened foreign trained dentist practicing in the U.S. I'd like to put some counterbalances out there to this kind of negative press.