Our mother was in a nursing home in Alabama. She needed a few teeth extracted in order to get her dentures. Is this contract legal?

Extractions can cost $200 or more each tooth. That depends if the tooth is above the surface or impacted. So $2000 doesn't seem unheard of.

Just curious. Mom was prepay? NH was her payee for SS? She had no dental coverage?

Or, was Mom on Medicaid for her care? If so Medicaid would have paid for the dental work so I guess not.

When my mom was in a Nursing Home as a private pay patient, she paid for her dental care from a visiting dentist privately. The charges were not huge, but of course much more than her regular dentist charged, because he was coming to her, not the other way around.

This dentist suggested extractions and new dentures but we turned the offer down because it seemed a terrible thing to put mom through all that pain.

I'm not arguing; I genuinely have no idea what a reasonable monthly fee would be for retaining a visiting dental service.

So: your mother was charged $100 ish a month for 18 months, plus ad hoc charges for the extractions? And even though, very sadly I agree, she did not live to benefit from new dentures, did the dentist take impressions or do any work towards them, anything like that?

I must agree with you that for the facility to make dental cover compulsory seems questionable. Was there any choice about provider, could you retain your own dentist and pay separately if you'd wanted to?

Your mother wasn't really, was she now, charged $2K just for a few extractions. She paid for: access to the visiting service, check ups, the extractions and aftercare, plus any other work that was done. I appreciate the lasting sense of dissatisfaction, perhaps made worse by sorrow that she never benefited fully; and to repeat I don't know what's "normal"; but this certainly isn't the cheekiest charging I've ever seen.

What else has been going on?