In Need of an Affordable Dental Plan
May 21, 2013 7:45 PM Subscribe
I am looking for a dental plan I can enroll in. My employer does not provide dental insurance. I live in Massachusetts.
I have no current dental problems, but would like to have the piece of mind having an insurance plan and access to cleanings, check ups, x-rays, etc.
I have done some initial web research, but bombarded with tons of option and quite frankly, I just don't know where to begin.
Can anyone lend some advice as to companies/plans/options that are out there? I've seen plans from $100s to $1000s.
Something with different pricing options would be good, but not essential.
I have a dentist that I have seen regularly for the past 3-4 years and considering approaching them asking if there is any type of plan they could plan with, but they are located out of state and it isn't ideal to make trips back just for dental appointments.
I have no current dental problems, but would like to have the piece of mind having an insurance plan and access to cleanings, check ups, x-rays, etc.
I have done some initial web research, but bombarded with tons of option and quite frankly, I just don't know where to begin.
Can anyone lend some advice as to companies/plans/options that are out there? I've seen plans from $100s to $1000s.
Something with different pricing options would be good, but not essential.
I have a dentist that I have seen regularly for the past 3-4 years and considering approaching them asking if there is any type of plan they could plan with, but they are located out of state and it isn't ideal to make trips back just for dental appointments.
Maybe others will have some good suggestions, but in my experience, paying out-of-pocket for preventive care, even with x-rays, has worked out cheaper than paying dental insurance premiums. Make sure your dentist and the office know that you aren't insured - they should be able to quote you a price beforehand; be sure to ask them for a discount for paying up front too. THe only time dental insurance has been a good idea for us is when we need work done or when my employer has offered dirt cheap premiums (and even then, they're only going to pay a max $1000 per year). I had a wisdom tooth out and a complicated cavity filled without insurance, and neither incident was catastrophic. If you do need a lot of work done, my husband has googled for plans online before and gotten a good discount but this was several years ago and I don't remember the site...
posted by Tandem Affinity at 8:09 PM on May 21, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Tandem Affinity at 8:09 PM on May 21, 2013 [1 favorite]
Dental insurance is not really like other forms of insurance. It is more like having your employer pay for your dentist visits. Even when your employer pays for it, it tends to have very low limits on the amount of care it will pay for.
I'm pretty sure you won't find anything that will save you money or increase your peace of mind versus just paying for your own checkups and cleanings, and if possible setting aside some money in your rainy day fund in case something more expensive comes up.
posted by alms at 8:11 PM on May 21, 2013 [1 favorite]
I'm pretty sure you won't find anything that will save you money or increase your peace of mind versus just paying for your own checkups and cleanings, and if possible setting aside some money in your rainy day fund in case something more expensive comes up.
posted by alms at 8:11 PM on May 21, 2013 [1 favorite]
I know this is not exactly the advice you asked for, but it is still advice on dental insurance:
Do not get dental insurance.
I have no current dental problems, but would like to have the piece of mind having an insurance plan and access to cleanings, check ups, x-rays, etc.
Insurance works on the assumption that there is a small probability any one of a group of people will incur a large financial loss. Me, you, and eight other people are sailing our million-dollar ships across the ocean. There's a 10% one of us's ship will be destroyed. So we each agree to cover that loss. It costs us each 10% of the replacement value of the ship to buy this "ship insurance". 100k to cover our risk to our million. When one sinks, that guy gets the pool of money. This is how all insurance mostly works: most people don't crash their cars, most houses don't burn down, and so on.
Health insurance is *partly* organized along these lines: not everyone needs to get a heart valve replaced, and it costs $250,000 when you do. Most people don't get cancer or what have you. People's needs for health care services are widely varying.
With dentistry, things are different. Look what you've outlined in your post: cleanings, checkups, and x-rays. Everyone in the world needs the exact same amount of these. Nothing about them is insurable. There is a 100% probability of you needing to get these services. This would be like trying to buy "empty gas tank insurance" or "oil change" insurance for your car. In a perfectly competitive market, it would cost exactly the same as just buying gas or oil changes. In reality, it will cost more, because there will be inefficiencies brought into the mix in administering the plans, marketing them, etc.
Consequently, most dental insurance is really more like a payment plan. You are going to spend $X on dental care per year, but you are dividing into 12 payments of $X/12 + profit for the insurance company.
In medicine, everything is different because you can't make choices about what ambulance picks you up, because the pricing of everything is completely insane, etc, beyond just the normal insurance issues.
In dentistry, this is not generally the case. Call up the dentist, tell them you'll pay cash, get the price. Dental work prices do vary, but it's pretty simple to just pay the bill. Just get one you like and trust. It's basically like finding a mechanic.
On top of that, for the things that seem like they would be insurable, like a catastrophic accident in which you lose all your teeth, most dental plans aren't going to cover that anyway, for a variety of reasons that are too complicated to go into here. So they don't actually give you any piece of mind on the big stuff.
If you want "piece of mind" for dealing with unexpected dental bills, either keep some extra cash in savings, or get a spare credit card (and then do a balance transfer to a card with cheap balance transfers and 0% introductory rates if something happens that you can't afford) and you'll have synthetically created your own cheaper, easier, more flexible dental plan.
posted by jeb at 8:18 PM on May 21, 2013 [10 favorites]
Do not get dental insurance.
I have no current dental problems, but would like to have the piece of mind having an insurance plan and access to cleanings, check ups, x-rays, etc.
Insurance works on the assumption that there is a small probability any one of a group of people will incur a large financial loss. Me, you, and eight other people are sailing our million-dollar ships across the ocean. There's a 10% one of us's ship will be destroyed. So we each agree to cover that loss. It costs us each 10% of the replacement value of the ship to buy this "ship insurance". 100k to cover our risk to our million. When one sinks, that guy gets the pool of money. This is how all insurance mostly works: most people don't crash their cars, most houses don't burn down, and so on.
Health insurance is *partly* organized along these lines: not everyone needs to get a heart valve replaced, and it costs $250,000 when you do. Most people don't get cancer or what have you. People's needs for health care services are widely varying.
With dentistry, things are different. Look what you've outlined in your post: cleanings, checkups, and x-rays. Everyone in the world needs the exact same amount of these. Nothing about them is insurable. There is a 100% probability of you needing to get these services. This would be like trying to buy "empty gas tank insurance" or "oil change" insurance for your car. In a perfectly competitive market, it would cost exactly the same as just buying gas or oil changes. In reality, it will cost more, because there will be inefficiencies brought into the mix in administering the plans, marketing them, etc.
Consequently, most dental insurance is really more like a payment plan. You are going to spend $X on dental care per year, but you are dividing into 12 payments of $X/12 + profit for the insurance company.
In medicine, everything is different because you can't make choices about what ambulance picks you up, because the pricing of everything is completely insane, etc, beyond just the normal insurance issues.
In dentistry, this is not generally the case. Call up the dentist, tell them you'll pay cash, get the price. Dental work prices do vary, but it's pretty simple to just pay the bill. Just get one you like and trust. It's basically like finding a mechanic.
On top of that, for the things that seem like they would be insurable, like a catastrophic accident in which you lose all your teeth, most dental plans aren't going to cover that anyway, for a variety of reasons that are too complicated to go into here. So they don't actually give you any piece of mind on the big stuff.
If you want "piece of mind" for dealing with unexpected dental bills, either keep some extra cash in savings, or get a spare credit card (and then do a balance transfer to a card with cheap balance transfers and 0% introductory rates if something happens that you can't afford) and you'll have synthetically created your own cheaper, easier, more flexible dental plan.
posted by jeb at 8:18 PM on May 21, 2013 [10 favorites]
Chiming in to agree with what's already been said--individual dental insurance is not worth it. My dentist does offer a dental care plan, though, which gets me a discount on services of 10-20 percent depending on the service. It's $80 per year and I can cover that savings in one visit. I spend a few thousand dollars in dental care each year, so if you have stronger teen than mine it may not be worth it. But ask if they offer something like that!
posted by peanut_mcgillicuty at 8:31 PM on May 21, 2013
posted by peanut_mcgillicuty at 8:31 PM on May 21, 2013
I was gonna come here to say that most everybody I know pays their own dental, including me, but jeb kinda nailed it.
posted by Camofrog at 8:33 PM on May 21, 2013
posted by Camofrog at 8:33 PM on May 21, 2013
I also live in MA, and if you live in the Pioneer Valley I can even recommend a dentist.
posted by Camofrog at 8:37 PM on May 21, 2013
posted by Camofrog at 8:37 PM on May 21, 2013
I didn't notice until Camofrog's comment that you are in MA -- memail if you want a strong Worcester recommendation, and I think my coworker likes her dentist in Watertown (one visit only so far).
posted by Tandem Affinity at 8:39 PM on May 21, 2013
posted by Tandem Affinity at 8:39 PM on May 21, 2013
I use a thing called Dental For Everyone, which seems sketchy and weird at first, but actually works for me. The basic idea is that you pay a very small amount of money (a dollar, I think) to join this totally artificial group ('BAI') that exists for the sole purpose of getting group insurance and group discounts on things. What jeb says above seems absolutely true, and I don't claim to understand anything at all about the structure of the insurance industry, but I've done the math and I pay substantially less with Dental For Everyone (insurance+copays) than I would without. That depends on what specific plan you get and what services you use, of course -- you should do your own math before you sign up, and make sure it will work for you too. I did have to choose from a smallish list of dentists, but I found one I like just fine.
posted by brianconn at 9:24 PM on May 21, 2013
posted by brianconn at 9:24 PM on May 21, 2013
Be aware that most 'good' dental plans only pay something like half of any major work. Like my dental plan pays for regular check-ups and cleaning 100%, but if I need a crown, root canal, filling, etc--basically anything expensive--it pays exactly 50%.
So, just calibrate your expectations about how much you're going to save with a realistic idea of how much dental insurance actually covers, because it is a lot less than you might expect, especially for the most expensive items.
posted by flug at 10:23 PM on May 21, 2013
So, just calibrate your expectations about how much you're going to save with a realistic idea of how much dental insurance actually covers, because it is a lot less than you might expect, especially for the most expensive items.
posted by flug at 10:23 PM on May 21, 2013
Nthing that you don't need dental insurance. Like you, I had assumed that dental was the sort of thing that you needed insurance to negotiate affordable prices. In reality, a lot of dental patients are uninsured, and even a good employer paid dental plan will not cover the expensive extreme outlier cases -- they often have an annual benefits cap, and substantial co-pays. The good news is that prices are fairly affordable. I ended up putting off some dental work in grad school that I could have easily afforded!
If you want insurance, self-insure. Take the money you'd pay to premiums and put it in a savings account or Roth IRA or whatever. Build up a few thousand (internally) earmarked for dental expenses and let the earnings cover the routine dental cleanings / x-rays.
posted by pwnguin at 10:26 PM on May 21, 2013
If you want insurance, self-insure. Take the money you'd pay to premiums and put it in a savings account or Roth IRA or whatever. Build up a few thousand (internally) earmarked for dental expenses and let the earnings cover the routine dental cleanings / x-rays.
posted by pwnguin at 10:26 PM on May 21, 2013
Take the money you'd pay to premiums and put it in a savings account or Roth IRA or whatever.
FYI a Health Savings Account is a good place to sock away money for things like this. If it's available through your employer it is very easy to contribute to, the money is pre-tax, and you can roll excess funds over from year to year without penalty.
Just last week I paid the co-pay for a dental crown from our Health Savings Account, so it definitely works for this kind of thing.
posted by flug at 11:24 PM on May 21, 2013
FYI a Health Savings Account is a good place to sock away money for things like this. If it's available through your employer it is very easy to contribute to, the money is pre-tax, and you can roll excess funds over from year to year without penalty.
Just last week I paid the co-pay for a dental crown from our Health Savings Account, so it definitely works for this kind of thing.
posted by flug at 11:24 PM on May 21, 2013
I got outstanding dental care 8 years ago at the Tufts Dental School Clinic. I had insurance at the time and it covered most everything, but they had a sliding scale for people without insurance. I saw the same fourth year student every time and she now has her own practice in Needham. I'd be happy to send you her contact info.
posted by mareli at 5:38 AM on May 22, 2013
posted by mareli at 5:38 AM on May 22, 2013
Dental insurance is generally pretty inexpensive, and typically pays a set amount for preventive visits, like cleanings or periodic xrays. This amount might be less than your dentist charges, but my dentist, who I've been seeing for many years, usually waives the difference. For bigger ticket items like crowns or root canals, it pays less, like 50% up to $1500 per tooth. But in these situations the $750 they pay is more than the yearly premium.
My dentist recommends Aetna for those people who are not elegible for group insurance. Like other insurance, buying it is a gamble, but if you end up needing a lot of dental care, it's totally worth it. Dental costs can add up fast.
posted by citygirl at 7:40 AM on May 22, 2013
My dentist recommends Aetna for those people who are not elegible for group insurance. Like other insurance, buying it is a gamble, but if you end up needing a lot of dental care, it's totally worth it. Dental costs can add up fast.
posted by citygirl at 7:40 AM on May 22, 2013
Dental insurance is not really worth much. I get a free plan through my employer, but it will only cover $500 of the estimated $14,000 in treatment I need for some "worst case" scenario dental work. I paid about $125 for my cleaning and x-ray this year - not that far off what I would have paid in cash, I think.
posted by quadrilaterals at 9:58 AM on May 24, 2013
posted by quadrilaterals at 9:58 AM on May 24, 2013
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by erst at 8:08 PM on May 21, 2013 [5 favorites]