After being a licensed dental hygienist for the past 26 years, I can tell you passing this  DALL would be a huge disservice to the public.  The dentist  who are trying to  get this passed say  they will train and supervise the services their assistants provide. Well, where does it stop?  They can supervise them to clean some patient's teeth because they are "easy  to do type patients" , scaling above the gum. Even scaling above the gum can be tricky.  Just imagine the learning process, oops i just accidentaly removed part off your papilla,  sorry this instument is sharp!  My boss showed me how , but i need to practice more. Are we going to have some patients volunteer to be the guinea pigs while the assistants learn?  I  can easily be trained to do  a veneer , filling ,or root canal by my dentist too. I have more experince in dentistry than lots of dentist fresh out of school and probably do a better restoration than them...  doesn't mean the law should be changed so i can get trained by dentist to help out so he doesn't have to pay another dentist to handle his overload of patients.  Do you really think they are going to lower fees to the public?  No, they are going to sacrifice quality of care for the patients in an effort to reduce their overhead plain and simple.   Just pretend we were honest about this upfront to the patient... "miss jones,  I could have my assistant clean your teeth for less because she knows how... I taught her... she did not have to practice on volunteers or take  board exam, I taught her to scape off  tartar that she can see".  You will be her first patient .  I can see more and more patients slipping into the catagory of "easy patients " so the assistant can scape off what they see and lots of submarginal calculus going undetected leading to  poor quality of care for the unknowing public.  Hey ,why have boards and licenses.. lets all train each other... that way no one is responsilbe and it will be cheap for the employer.   Gaurantee the dentist will not reduce fees to patient  for assistant cleanings.  Bet your money , the person who benefits here--- the one  who gets to make more money at the patients expense.   We must continue to have boards and education in dental hygiene  practice in order to ensure a standard of care that protects the consumer as  periodontal disease left untreated  profoundly affects the publics health .