Health Insurance and dental care

Dental Insurance And Health Insurance

Some health insurance plans do include a dental plan as an optional feature of coverage for a modest fee. However, this coverage is typically relatively limited. On the other hand, you can purchase stand alone dental policies for about $25 per month which offer significantly more coverage.

Dental As Part Of Health Insurance, Or A Stand Alone Policy?

The answer to this question is largely dependent on what kind of expenses you expect to incur from your dental health. Are you just looking to get a cleaning every six months? Or are you likely to need major dental work in the foreseeable future? If you are purchasing a plan for your family, you will likely want to purchase extensive dental coverage for your children who will eventually need braces, retainers, wisdom teeth pulled, or other major procedures.

Even if you don’t anticipate any major issues, just one root canal or a few fillings can set you back thousands of dollars, so it might be simpler and easier to simply purchase a dental plan for a low monthly payment and purchase not only insurance, but peace of mind.

As with all insurance policies, knowing the details of the plan are crucial to avoiding financial pitfalls. Some plans may only offer full coverage after 12 months as a customer, so expensive procedures will only be partially covered until then, if at all.

Dental plans have similar coverage types to health insurance plans—HMOs, PPOs, etc.

Low Cost Alternatives

If you don’t think a dental plan will be worth the money for what you want to spend, but you still want to maintain a healthy mouth, consider a student dentist or free clinic.

Student dentists—under supervision of qualified professionals—can provide many services at a significantly discounted rate.

Free clinics offer services at no charge to patients on a first come, first serve basis. However, they are often crowded and require long waits to get an appointment. So if you have the means to avoid free clinics, it’s probably easier for you and allows people who really have no other option to get the treatment they need.