So I stopped by my dentist's office yesterday afternoon, and inquired about the cost to remove a couple troublesome wisdom teeth. "It's $500 per tooth," said the receptionist. "Wow," I said. "TOOOOOO much." "Well," said the nice young lady behind the desk, "Let me get the doctor up here and see what we can do." My actual dentist, Doc Lee, was soon up at the desk. "Chief!" he said. (I'm one of his favorite patients, y'know. He LOVES my jokes.) "What can I do for you?" "Doc," I said, "What can we do about lowering the cost to get a couple wisdom teeth removed?" "Well," he said, "I guess we could cut out the pain reliever. Without novocaine, I could do it for $250 each." "Too much. What else?" "I guess I could let the intern do it. He's never removed teeth before, and I expect it'd be pretty painful. I would charge you $100 total." "OK, that sounds more like it," I said. "I'll bring Mrs Chief around Monday. I'm tired of hearing her complain about those two wisdom teeth."