Is this because dentists can tell patients who forgot their wallets to take a hike, hospitals can't, and for the most part hospitals don't do emergency dentistry? [0] That is, if dentists were more "ethical", we might see the same problems with cost and payment in dentistry that we see in health care in general?

[0] Sure, there are extreme exceptions, since most hospitals have a dentist they can call when an emergency patient is admitted because an abscessed tooth has destroyed their entire body... It takes commitment and/or great misfortune to get to that point.