Most of us are going to find ourselves facing the question, someday or sometime. A dental need will arise, and we won’t be covered for the expense. In a time when any form of insurance is becoming harder and harder to acquire but the expectation of insurance is becoming more and more absolute, it is important to consider ahead of time how you are going to deal with your dental care options when you are medically uninsured.
Without medical insurance your costs will either be met out of your own pocket, or your needs will go unmet entirely. If you are young and healthy, with good teeth and a family background of sound dental health, that may seem like an acceptable option. However if you have any negative facts influencing your dental health it may be harder to be so confident.
Age, gum disease, a family background of tooth damage and tooth loss: all these can combine to leave you trapped with serious health challenges arising out of problems with your dental condition, but no way to pay. So what are your dental care options?
The methods of coping are diverse. Among them are establishing either a private dental insurance plan in spite of your lack of overall medical coverage, or setting up a dental savings plan privately or through your dental care provider.
Dental health insurance plans are cheaper and less difficult to gain in most instances than the plans we usually consider for health insurance, if only because the company is far less likely to have to pay out the brutal amounts that extreme medical intervention can cost. With less to lose insurance companies are willing to charge premiums within the budget of most households, a price of hundreds of dollars a year rather than thousands…on a par with the cost of cable TV rather than house payments!
Another option for the medically uninsured is to set up a dental savings plan with your dental provider or as a private account through your bank. Dental savings plans through a dentist can lead to reduced costs as the dentist rewards you for making his own life more secure and simple. A savings plan set up through your bank provides you with capital, collateral, and equity whether you use it or not.
Other dental care options if you are not insured include the use of free clinics (rare but occasionally found for those in serious need), the use of training colleges which offer care at a reduced rate to allow trainees to practice their technique, and care provided or paid for by the state and federal health agencies allowed for varied reasons.
If you are a veteran you may be able to obtain care through veteran’s benefits. If you are over 65 Medicare may provide some level of coverage. Likewise a legally recognized disability may make you eligible for Medicare of for one of the state medical funding programs.
If you are in doubt what you are eligible to obtain call your dentist first: in many instances your dentist will have the most direct experience with the funding methods open to his clients. It is just sensible to recognize that your dentist deals with issues of patient funding many times daily, as does his staff, where any other worker, public or private, is unlikely to accumulate the same focused body of knowledge. However be prepared to look further on your own once your dentist has provided his best advice.
Finding alternative methods of caring for your dental health even if you are medically uninsured is challenging, but not impossible. Plan ahead, get advice, look into state, federal, and other resources, and know that caring for yourself is vital.
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