Did You Know That Dental Insurance Can End Up Costing You More In The Long Run?

For most people, dental insurance looks exactly like regular medical insurance. This means it is a very good way to make sure that you do not pay the full bill in the event that some catastrophic treatment costs appear. It is completely normal to be attracted to dental insurance policies since they are all presented as being very beneficial. 

The problem is that dental insurance is definitely not as important for people as regular medical insurance. In some situations, when you go to an experienced Canberra dentist, it might actually make sense not to use dental insurance in the first place. Let’s try to understand why this is the case.

Insurance companies always try to make money in one way or another. Their goal is to make more money through premiums than what is paid through covered treatment costs. As a result, because of the fact that you are supposed to visit the dentist at least one time per year, premiums tend to be on the higher side. Also, the companies try to save money in other ways that are not that dishonest. 

People are allowed to not have dental insurance. This is not a problem. The alternative is to build up your treatment needs over several years. The dental companies understand that this is very popular and in order to have a profit, the cover very little in treatment terms. In fact, most of the dental plans have a hard cap on how much treatment is covered during one year. This is the opposite of the standard out-of-pocket maximums we see in the medical insurance plans.

Another very problematic thing is that insurance plans put larger incentives in place when being treated by the in-network dentists. As soon as a dentist becomes a part of the network, he/she has to agree to receiving low reimbursements for exams and cleaning. In return, there is a steadier stream of patients available. Some of the dentists will make it up by finding extra work. Unfortunately, the dentists mathematically need to do something else or they end up losing money.

Dentists are often forced to recommend treatments that are not covered by the insurance policies, like intensive dental cleaning procedures with numerous office visits, or quadrant scaling. Patients quickly figure this out. In many cases you end up paying less when you go to the out-of-network dentists as opposed to those you find through the dental insurance network.

At the end of the day, the dental plan could offer free exams and cleanings once every 6 months or so. But, you might also end up having to pay more in the long run and the dentist might be forced to look for extra work, sometimes recommending what is not covered just for extra profits. Most of the good dentists out there will never recommend going to a dentist that was simply recommended by the insurance provider. With this in mind, always take the time needed to check every single aspect of dental insurance. You do not want to waste money when a simple research could have helped you to save money.