Ronald S Young, DDS

This guy is terrible. I had him as a dentist roughly 15 years ago, when I was a teenager with poor insurance. I had two cavities that were deep. When he drilled my teeth, he did not put medicine in the tooth before filling up. I had nerve damage, which I was unable to eat or drink normal foods for months.
Then when my wisdom teeth were growing in, I told him that they are bothering me already, he tried to play it off as if it was normal. my face ended up blowing up as if there was a golf ball in my face. I ended up having to pay another dentist to do a wisdom tooth extraction and a root canal on the next tooth because of the damage that wisdom tooth caused. Not to mention, the pain that I endured, I lost 20lbs due to being unable to eat solid foods for weeks.
The medical board should take away this man’s license!

I went to Ronald Young a few years ago, and would never return to his office.
The only thing I liked was the accessibility of this dentist, as he was his own answering service, and made sure that I called my provider organization to verify his participation on the insurance panel that my employer ok’d.
What I had no idea about, (since I hadn’t first contacted Unilocal), is that this dentist was lacking hygiene, and had no new equipment to clean my teeth.
He used a timer, as others had written, answered the phone during my session, had an old paper cup of water that the previous patient had been using, and wanted to charge me for my x-​rays, which the dental care manager restricted on a conference call that I made to him.
I would never go back to his office, and would recommend that he have to leave his profession, lest others leave his office (as I did), with celery in their teeth, following a «cleaning».

years later, i find out that dr. young did not «replace my sealants» as he represented. in fact, he gave me fillings even though i have never had a cavity and he did no xrays. now, i must pay to have the fillings replaced because they are falling out. …
um. dentist who drills holes in your teeth and puts in fillings only to commit insurance fraud? DO NOT GO HERE!

SCARY SCARY SCARY.
I was horried to read all the reviews below because I agreed with them. Luckily, I was so very creeped out that I actually got up while he was out answering the phone during my examination (as many other reviews say) and walked out. I honestly felt scared for my life. I can’t believe Blue Cross Blue Shield has him on their list of insurers, but I guess this is what socialized medicine is all about!
Do not go here!

Every other review of this dentist is spot on. He hasn’t changed his ways and I wish that I would have read these review before going to him for hundreds of dollars of work.
Luckily the results of my procedures weren’t as life-​threatening but when a dentist decides to do everything in the office then he should be on top of it. I’ve had to manage to much of his paper work in order to get reimbursed by my FSA. This guy is unsanitary, unreliable and I’m inclined to think that I didn’t need all of the work I needed done.
DON’T GO TO HIM.

His office is dirty and unorganized
Dr Young is dentist, hygienist, and receptionist all in one which means he is answering phones, checking insurance, looking an xrays and cleaning your teeth with the SAME GLOVES! gross!
I have a chip on my front tooth that he wanted to drill (DRILL!!!) and put a filling on! I have seen 5 plus dentists since this chip happened 10 yrs ago– no one has ever suggested this! Even worse– he was planning on drilling the wrong filling out!
I already switched my HMO dentist to someone else. Not worth rushing and using Flex Spending Money before it expires– rather have a professional work on my teeth.
And he never had heard of Flex Spending Account– WOW.

Just moved here and picked from my list of network providers from my new jobs insurance.
Walked in, the guy had me fill out the forms. I was late but he didn’t mind so that was nice of him.
Teeth cleaned, wasn’t too bad but he kept poking under the gums and it was super sensitive.
I’m cool with him trying to do the secretarial stuff as well as the dentistry, but once you put the gloves on and start in on my mouth, please don’t go out and answer phones and touch doorknobs and then come back into my mouth. Not cool.
Also i’m cool with using tape to hold the xray machine tube on, that didn’t bother me but PLEASE clean your old tools! I inspected the polisher tool AFTER he was done, it was covered with the sandy polish as expected, but it was also covered with hardened old polish and it was clear that it had not been cleaned in months or more.
Actually the worst part was he pulled out an invoice and had me sign it, but DO NOT date it he told me. Then he pulled out a second invoice and told me to do the same.
I asked WTF why do you need two undated invoices that sounds like a scam and he immediately pulled them away and dropped it. SKETCHY! Is he submitting these blank undated invoices with claims of work done that wasn’t?! RED-​FLAG!
lastly a small thing: the copay was $ 20, he said oh you’re paying by cc? great it’s just one more dollar so $ 21 please. i asked why didn’t you tell me that beforehand and he was like it’s only a dollar so i said fine but it’s also going into the review.
first review on Unilocal btw, waiting for something to affect me enough to post.

This was absolutely the VERY WORST dentist experience I have EVER had. I am almost 70 years old. Do the math. To begin with, his waiting room, and the treatment rooms are ABSOLUTELY FILTHY. Next, this man has ZERO support staff. His personality is that of a ZOMBIE. In my opinion, his abilities, as a dentist, are MARGINAL AT BEST. I have had some of his EXPENSIVE work DONE OVER by a competent dentist. I heard the words DOOMED FROM THE START, in reference to his work. I have better things to do than sit around writing this review. You could DIE letting this man do ANYTHING having to do with your mouth.

Though my experience with «dr» young isn’t nearly as tragic as some others, I still feel he should get another terrible review.
I was assigned to him with my insurance for cleaning, xray and polish. He set a stopwatch to my appointment, allotting 30 minutes. I told him I had sensitivity where I have exposed roots, and immediately following me telling him this he JAMMED the metal pick into where my roots were exposed. I actually screamed in his chair.
The worst part follows: I was there with my girlfriend, who has a hear murmur. She told Young about this, knowing that she would need to take antibiotics before her appt. He was going to clean, x ray and polish without her being on antibiotics that very day. Can I say LIFE threatening risk?
This man is INCOMPETENT to practice. I have filed formal complaints against him.
PLEASE FILE COMPLAINTS with the california dental board at:

I had the worst dentist experience here. I went to Young because he was listed in my insurance book. Like others, I was at first surprised by the phone accessibility and how quick I was able to make an appointment… not realizing that that was because he had no receptionist.
My appointment was for 11am. He had one person in one of the ‘exam’ rooms and me. I’ll sum it to say that he «wrapped up» with that patient in whatever he was doing… and when did I get in to be seen? 11:45. So that patient gone, its just me. I’m escorted back to one of the exam rooms and immediately I feel sort of the hair on the back of the neck warning come over me. The room and equipment is dated. Very dated. Magazines are stacked on top of the machine all sloppily, the tray in front looks unclean, I see open drawers/​cabinets in which things are shoved in messily.
I’m already having doubts– but I tell myself I’m just here for the exam to get the referral.
(I should explain what I was coming to the office with in hand. A few months prior, I was being seen at the University of the Pacific School of Dentistry. I had full mouth xrays taken and had gotten a full scale exam in terms of everything that needed to be done in my mouth. I had two particular painful issues, overall it could be summed up to about two root canals, two bridges and two crowns, plus a few fillings and a good cleaning. The staff and students at the school were fantastic but due to the expensive nature of my procedures, I needed to go through my dental insurance provider. When the insurance kicked in, I was set with my X rays in hand and a good understanding of what I needed to get done at my next dentist.)
Waiting for Young to come into the room, I noticed the rinse cups sitting lip face down on the counter surface and a bottle of gel hand sanitizer next to the sink. No soap.
Young comes in, I show him my files expecting him to want to take a look in my mouth just to verify their findings. He starts reading the files outloud and reciting what they recommend to get done, skipping over the most urgent and painful first priority issues of a cracked tooth and lost filling/​exposed tooth. I notice he’s reading things that aren’t urgent, but work to be done by a general dentist… hmm… And he keeps repeating himself, «oh a night guard, your wisdom teeth removed…»
Then he says «They want to do a root canal on a wisdom tooth, we don’t do root canals on wisdom teeth». I the patient, then explain to the Dentist, that I believe they were recommending that because the tooth next to it needed a bridge and in order to have the bridge, they’d need to keep the wisdom tooth.
He scans around to other things on the recommended dental work sheet, lingering on my insurance co-​pay list for procedures. Then reverses and proceeds to explain to me that they would need to do a root canal to keep the tooth so that a bridge could be made for the tooth next to it. A-​DUH! I just said that.
He didn’t seem to care about the the pain issues I was having. He sits me back, and I think he’s going to examine my mouth finally, test the fillings, sensitivity and all of that. Instead he whips out tools and starts doing a hacking cleaning of my teeth– which I did not ask for. He tells me I have plaque build up, which I am aware that my gums bleed a bit and I need to floss more.
I have had cleanings. and this was half ass and very painful. I can stand the dental chair, I have a pretty solid track record for withstanding dental pain. but this man actually made me wince and my muscles twitch. When my gums did bleed, he didn’t use any rinse aid from the water sprayer– instead he just used the suction tube and gauze. Gauze! Patting my mouth, drying it out, and sloppily lifting and patting to where I feel like its getting on my lips or face. It’s at this point he answers the phone. Of Course.
To move the story along, he tells me to go rinse with water and don’t be alarmed if blood comes out. He says I should gargle with salt water to stop bleeding. I don’t notice until leaving the office that I have a bloody gumline where blood is still clotting 10 minutes after the scraping ceased. When the ‘cleaning’ is done, he says a specialist would need to look at the wisdom tooth for that root canal, I tell him I’d like the referral sheet. He trys to mention the other work that he needs to do, but I say I just want to start with the specialist. He almost reluctantly gives me back my dental records since uh… they are my own and I need them for the specialist, and then reiterates that I should call him right after to set up the appointments for the other work. He repeated this statement again 3 times before I left his office.
I will never go back to this man. Also discovered later that my co-​workers dentist horror story turned out to be this same man.
That was enough for me. Unsanitary, hazardous, he’s getting reported.

Prologue
The rough draft for this review went into great detail about the series of unfortunate events that happened to me after I agreed to see Mr. Young to have my wisdom teeth removed. The rough draft of this review was also way too long so I scrapped it in favor of this very much abbrev. version.
Chapter 1
D-​Day
About 18mos ago I had the worst experience of my life…
I was sent to this god forsaken place after speaking with the folks at my HMO and I let Mr. Young remove two of my wisdom teeth.
The procedure itself was both painful and lengthy, very painful and very lengthy. He gave me a shot to numb the area, as we waited the 15 min for the shot to kick in he was running around his office answering the phones and scheduling appointments. I look around the room and start to notice things I hadn’t seen before. Everything just looked dated. From the ripped and torn Highlights magazines to the stickers peeling off the overhead lamp… this sh#t is old! And when you are strapped to the dentists chair nothing is more creepy than being surrounded by obsolete dental machinery poised and ready to be wielded against you. Before I had enough time to devise a way to escape he came back and started wrenching away at my teeth. I winced in pain. Whoops! The shot was ineffective. «No problem, we do another shot» We repeated this process 4 times. Until finally, with my anxiety peaking at the realization that he had no idea what he was doing, my fight or flight response kicks in. I needed to get the hell out of there so I told him to just go ahead and get it over with, despite the fact the novocaine was not working. He obliged. I felt every excruciating twist and pull of those pliers as he wrenched away. I ran home crying. I’m wincing now as I write this, years later.
Chapter 2
The Aftermath
Approx 7 days after the procedure I ended up in the emergency room with a severe and life threatening infection. This is how I got there…
My jaw and cheek were swelling so bad it was all I could do to get my mouth open far enough to squeeze a vicodin in there. I could barely take a vic for christs sake and still I had to convince this guy that a follow up was necessary. Clearly something was wrong but all he kept doing was prescribing me stronger antibiotics. When I came in he told me that because my jaw was swollen shut he wasn’t able to do anything because he couldn’t get in there to take a look. So, as he promised, he did just that… nothing.
Eventually, after losing 15 pounds (it was physically impossible to get food in. I was living off of slim fast shakes) and my cheek so swollen that it looked like i had a golf ball in my mouth, I went to an oral surgeon for a second opinion. He examined me for less than 5 min before leaving the room and returning moments later to inform me that they had a cab waiting outside to take me immediately to the emergency room.
If I had left my treatment in the hands of that evil basta… um…I mean Dr. Young and not gotten a second opinion… I COULD HAVE DIED.
When consulting with an attorney about legal action against Dr. Young, my attorney informed me that he was «familiar» with Dr. Young. When I pressed him further about this he was very vague and would not go into further detail but gave me the impression that he had actually sued Dr. Young previously.
After consulting with the staff at SF General (who were awesome btw) and being satisfied that in their professional opinion I would eventually regain full use of my jaw and that the damage would not be permanent I decided against pursuing any legal action.
It has taken me 18 months to gather the courage to see another dentist and finally get my other two wisdom teeth removed. I went to an oral surgeon, Peter E. Lyu DDS, MD, this time. He was more than competent and has renewed my fath in the medical profession.

This dentist sucks.
He wants to charge me 40 dollars to releast my x-​ray.

OMG! DR YOUNG IS SO SCARY!!! EVERYONE BELOW IS CORRECT! I just came back from my appointment this morning!
–THE IDIOT ANSWERS PHONES WHILE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PROCEDURE!
–His office is dirty, I’m so upset with myself I didn’t even realize if he opened a new packed of tools in front of me or not, and I am now scared of diseases!
–He forced x-​rays on me
–The cleaning was horrible! Poked my gums! and instead of using a polising tool and work on each tooth he just smeared the polish over ALL of my teeth and then told me to get up and rinse it out!
I swear I am not a princess! but he is not qualified to have his own practice! or to be practicing at all! I have a new HMO with Delta Care USA because I needed a break for my orthodontic work I wanted and needed a referral from a dentist within network! However Young (does not deserve the DR title) knew of my situation and waited until after he did the xrays and mouth cleaning to tell me he won’t give me a referral!
He is money hungry! The only way he gets clients are by joining these poor HMO insurance hungry networks! and if there is a better business bureau or anyone starting a law suite against him and need signatures consider me on board! the amount of stress and pain and waste of time he caused me was completely unethical!
He goes on to tell me that he can offer me 5 fillings at $ 200/​each and then he would be able to give me a referral!
I have a PPO with a gen dentist I’ve been seeing, and I had a cleaning and new xrays less than 30 days ago! And there were not FIVE cavaities then that needed to be filled! THIS GUY DESERVES TO ROT IN HELL! It’s people like him that give the people in the medical field a bad name! Completely UNETHICAL! I just wished I went on Unilocal before scheduling my appointment!

I wish I could write something funnier than josh m’s review of Mr Young. Alas, I’ll just have to give the quick-​and-​dirty summary of my experience with this guy; I won’t do him the honor of using the title «Dentist», because it’s highly questionable whether this man even attended dental school. If he did, it must have been in George Washington’s time, because the temporary crown he placed looked like it could have been fashioned from wood.
Definitely DO NOT go to this dentist. Even if it’s an emergency, find somewhere else. Even if you’re missing your front tooth (as was our case), don’t come here; you’re better off making a fake tooth from a piece of candy corn than trusting your smile to this guy.

Screams turn to Unilocal’s.
How could I add to the 2 previous reviews? No stars for this man. They pretty much say it all. First of all, NEVER will I recommend HMO insurance. You may as well hand your friend a hammer and drill, find a dirty basement, and go for it… I had been to a couple dentists (hmo) who I just couldn’t trust, for one reason or another. When I was in pain and needed a dentist, I called around, which led me to Ronald S Young. Obviously, I didn’t do my proper research.
He seemed very friendly, and I was impressed he answered his phone and took the time to schedule an appt with me (even though he was out of his office). I now wonder if he had one of his victims in a chair while he so eagerly assisted me. Let’s just skip to my second and final visit. I had a filling fall out of my mouth, and the next morning I called him to see how soon I could get in. He put me off 3 days. By the time I got in there, my tooth was extremely sensitive. He didn’t even give me numbing this time, and I figured he was just going to fill it in (no big deal). Just like the first visit, he was trying to pitch me 3 bridges, which cost $ 500 each. He does small talk quite a bit, with some very «you don’t need to know» questions, and does have a funky tone when he talks to you. Kind of reminded me of Igor.
So during the filling procedure, he answered his phone about 3 times, having me sit uncomfortably in the chair, after he viciously rammed (and I mean rammed) a pick in the hole of my tooth, making me jump out of the chair screaming like I have never screamed before. I (as the other reviewer) wanted more than anything, to get up and walk, but what could I do at that point? He filled it in with the cheapest filling possible. I asked him to patch up a hole he left in an upper tooth a few weeks before. He did, but it came out a week later. He persisted on pitching the 3 bridges to me. I walked out of there in extreme pain, and swore I would never return. Needless to say, I have PPO now.
I urge you to stay away from Ronald Young.

I can not reccomend this dentist to anyone. He was very agressive picking at my teeth as if he wanted to break something to book additional revenue to fix it.
If you like dirty offices and non-​professional dentists, then this is the man for you.
I «coincidently» had a piece of a tooth break off a week after my visit. Even this aside, this was the worst dental experience of my life. I honestly felt I was in some type of horror movie with a quack dentist…