system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Eli5 Why are dentists separate from other medical specialties?

I feel like every other medical specialty is under the umbrella of medical doctors and can get just as specific as dentistry. Why is dentistry separate?
gpt
From an article in theatlantic:

The partition between dentistry and the rest of medicine dates back to the dental profession’s roots as an offshoot of hairdressing. Until the 1800s, barbers served as rudimentary dentists, pulling painful teeth and lancing abscesses after they finished trimming whiskers

This minimization of dentistry persisted when Congress was crafting the public health insurance programs in the 1960s. During the original 1965 formulation of Medicaid, the dental market wasn’t very robust and policymakers didn’t value it as highly as other forms of medical care, Edelstein says. In 1960, only 2.3 percent of Americans had some kind of dental insurance.