[Heel n Toe]

If you're not totally confident of your dentist in every way, I'd recommend changing to another one... much like you'd abandon a general practitioner if you felt like you were nothing more than a segment of his income.

I can ask my dentist anything and he takes his time and answers in a way I can understand. I asked him how it is determined when a filling redo isn't appropriate and it's time to go to a crown, and he explained it to my satisfaction. I can't remember the details, but basically it's something along the lines of "when 2/3rds or more of the tooth above a certain line is a filling and it fails or some decay gets under it, to remove the filling and drill out the bad stuff beneath the filling and put on another filling, you're endangering the rest of the tooth... it could crack in two."

I have had two or three crowns done, and my out-of-pocket on each one was $800-900. They just let me pay $75 a month until it was paid off. No interest.

From what I understand, a root canal is way more involved and expensive than a crown.