Dr. Holmes did not hide his contempt for insurance companies,...

Dr. Holmes did not hide his contempt for insurance companies, and definitely was not shy pointing out that dentists who relied on those kind of work will be squeezed badly. If you ever ran a small business, you know the best thing you can do is to get rid of bad customers as soon as possible. Bad customers are normally those who, 1. demand unreasonable price 2. defer the payment as late as possible 3. requires most time and energy to deal with. More often than not, a bad customer has all the three traits.

Worse yet, there are opportunity costs. For every work you perform for the bad customer, you lose the chance to attract a good one. This can be a vicious circle which leads to total dependence on work from bad customers. You can also trade short term profit for long run benefit. However, if you are freshly graduated from a dental school and owe a lot to open your practice, it is a luxury to pick where your businesses come from. As usual, there is an easy way and there is a hard way. You can get more businesses in a short time but damp your long term prospects or you can say no to those bullies and build your practice through hard work.