Dental care is not cheap, and fees have been climbing for years.
A lot of people shy away from regular checkups and preventive care because of what dental work costs. It rarely saves anyone money. A problem left alone almost always turns into a bigger problem and a larger bill later on.
To look after your teeth without going broke, you have a choice between dental insurance and a dental discount plan. The two work in very different ways, and plenty of people struggle to tell them apart.
Before you commit to either, understand what each one actually does, then pick the one that gives you the most useful savings.
What Are Dental Insurance Plans?
Dental insurance is designed to make dental care affordable to a wide group of people. The insurer negotiates lower prices with a set of dentists for anyone holding their policy. Those dentists make up the network. If you go to one of them, the insurer pays part of the reduced charge and you pay the rest out of your own pocket.
Typically, dental insurance covers all of your preventive care, meaning checkups, x-rays and cleanings, around 80% of basic work such as fillings and extractions, and around 50% of major procedures such as dentures and root canals. Whatever the insurer does not cover is your responsibility.
Policies differ from one another, so it is worth reading the detail before you sign up rather than after. Look at the annual premium and whether it is affordable on your circumstances. Check the waiting periods, because treatment usually has to be approved first, which makes insurance awkward in an emergency. Then work out how much you would actually save, based on the treatment you expect to need and the co-payments you would still be liable for.
What Are Dental Discount Plans?
Dental discount plans, also called dental savings plans, are simpler. They are exactly what the name says: a discount on the treatment you have done at a participating dentist. Some are run by the dental offices themselves, others by companies that do nothing else. There is no insurer in the middle. You pay the dentist directly, at the reduced rate.
You buy a membership, then present it whenever you need dental work, and the discount is applied. Discounts commonly range from 10% to 60% of the usual fee, depending on the plan and the treatment.
Because no third party is paying part of the bill, there is nothing to claim and nothing to wait for. As with insurance, how much you save depends entirely on the dental work you actually need.
Which One Should You Choose?
Dental insurance suits you if you want someone else contributing towards the bill, and you can live with an annual maximum, waiting periods and a monthly premium whether you use the policy or not.
A discount plan suits you if you would rather pay less at the time of treatment, with no annual cap, no deductible and no claim forms. The saving is immediate, but the whole bill is still yours.
The honest way to decide is to run the numbers on the treatment you expect. Put the annual premium and what the insurer would pay on one side, and the membership fee and the discount on the same work on the other, then see which one comes out ahead.
