Individual and Family Dental Insurance

You can obtain an individual dental plan for for $8 a month. There is no reason not to have some form of dental coverage.

Over 43 million Americans do not have health insurance (although the actual number is closer to 20 million). This number is a drop in the bucket compared to the number who do not have dental insurance. Yet, dental coverage is the most asked for benefit rider when someone shops for a health insurance plan.

Individual Dental Insurance versus Individual Dental Plans

Most of you use these terms interchangeably. However, the regulatory authorities do not see it that way. So, for discussion sake, an individual dental insurance plan is an underwritten plan offered by an insurance company and sold only by licensed insurance agents. An individual dental plan, is generally a discount dental program that may or may not be sold by a licensed agent.

Are Individual and Family Dental Plans Worth the Cost?

Many of you are used to a typical health insurance model for medical care. You have co-pays for doctors and prescriptions and a deductible for the big stuff.

If you had a family dental plan 15 years ago, the annual caps on the plan were probably around $1,000 per person per year. Now roll the calendar forward and quadruple the cost of dental care and guess what? The plans still have caps of around $1,000 per person.

What happened? Why do these plans defy economic sensibility? It is really quite simple. The cost of administration has gone up dramatically along with dental care. Inflation also took its toll. A crown and root canal can easily cost you $1500 to $1800. You can plow through a $1,000 worth of dentistry in a blink of an eye.

The insurance companies want to make money and paying for thousands of dollars of dental treatment would force them to charge you a fortune for dental insurance. So, they kept the benefits more or less constant and kept the price down.

If you don't need a lot of expensive dental work, this arrangement is fine. If you do need a couple of root canals and crowns, you are stuck with most of the bill.

We do have some answers to this problem, so read on.

First, it gets worse

When I was a child, my family dentist cleaned, filled and pulled teeth, made bridges, etc. They provided almost all dental services for the entire family. Children and adults went to the same dentist. Specialist were rare and considered an extreme measure.

Now, the kids go to pediodontist, the wisdom teeth are extracted by an oral surgeon and we have the endodontist, periodontist and so forth.

To summarize so far, premiums and dental costs went up each year and the benefit has stayed the same. The average family is responsible for more and more of the cost of their dental care and most families don't even have any dental insurance at all. Just hold on I am getting to the solutions.

Hope Springs Eternal

Don't get depressed, it is not as bad as it sounds. You just have to have realistic expectations and take advantage of the plans that are available. As I mentioned on the home page, don't expect to pay twenty bucks a month and have someone pay you for $5,000 of dentistry. You and I know it will never happen. But there are individual and family dental insurance plans that can really help.

I go into a much longer explanation about each type of plan on separate pages on this site. But just to review I will list some of the information here. Use the link on each topic to get deeper into it.

Use a Discount Dental Plan

Discount dental plans are cheap and widely accepted by tens of thousands of dentists nationwide. They can save you a considerable sum. There are no waiting periods and no limits. I use a discount dental plan and my $800 crown was reduced to $480. Not exactly free, but, with discounts of 30-60%, this is a no brainer. The only catch is, you have to find a dentist in the network that you like.

Use a DHMO

Dental HMO plans are not available in every state. We have them in New York, New Jersey, Florida and Texas. They are relatively inexpensive and will have low co-pays for most procedures. Again, if you find a participating dentist in your area, these plans are fantastic. I am considering the switch myself.

Want Complete Freedom? Use an Indemnity Plan

If you want to use any dentist of your choosing regardless of their network affiliations, then use an indemnity plan. These plans are slightly more expensive than the aforementioned plans, but will pay out fixed amounts for different procedures. Some of our better indemnity plan, like our Select plan, have a PPO network built in. This way you can take advantage of the discounted PPO rate and still get money for your dental work.

Next Steps

Use our dental plan quote page to view all of our plans.