How to Get the Best Value from Your Dental Care

Unlike sharks, you only get two sets of teeth your whole life, and the first set doesn’t last long enough to ignore the health and care of your second set. Dental education starts early, but good parents start when their children are a few months old to help the babies get used to putting something in their mouths that cleans gums and later teeth and develop good dental habits. Practiced often and correctly you only need to visit a dentist twice a year.

However, lives get busy and you can’t exactly portion out your lunch break to brush your teeth. So maybe you see the dentist a little more often. What makes such trips less painful to your mouth and pocket is knowing what your dental insurance provides and covers. Consulting your employee benefits handbook is the first smart step in how to get the best value from your dental care.

The best Texas employee benefits and insurance plans will pay 80-100% of preventive services, which includes regular checkups and cleanings with a hygienist. They might also pay 75-90% of teeth fillings, anesthesia, tooth extraction(as is the case with wisdom teeth that are growing in strange), and crowns or bridges. Typically 50% of everything else is covered, but it might be more or less depending on your plan. If you have dependents, and they end up needing braces, that’s covered under preventive or a max of 90%. Again it depends on your plan.

If the insurance costs too much, eats up too much of your paycheck even before taxes, or just doesn’t provide enough coverage after you’ve shelled out a lot of pre-tax dollars, there are other options. Certain health insurance brokers can be consulted for just what those options may be. The health insurance brokers may even find you a better deal of an all-encompassing plan that includes dental as well as medical/health. Given that more and more research indicates that many physical ailments of the body can be traced back to poor oral health care, including heart disease and some types of cancer, having a policy that takes care of your oral health as well as your body’s physical health needs is a very smart choice.

But what else can you expect to get out of a policy that isn’t part of your employer’s package? Maximizing value while minimizing expense is obviously the name of the game, no matter what kind of business, service or product is being offered or searched for. Again, health insurance brokers are used to customers telling them what kind of coverage they want, whether it be single, family with two adults or single parent family with x number of dependents, and how much they want it to cost in order to fit it into their budget. Health insurance brokers type in your requested info, crunch some numbers with all the insurance companies in their systems that they do business with, and the insurance companies compete to get your business through the health insurance brokers. It seems complicated, but all you will hear on your end is a return phone call with one to three companies offering you options for their plans and the price their willing to meet you at. Take the best and most coverage for the least monthly expense; that’s a no-brainer.

Dental insurance policies you have to pay for yourself can cost as little as $100/month, but if Tommy breaks three teeth in a fight at school or falls out of a tree and does the same thing, you’re covered. The monthly policy expense can go as high as almost $1,000/month, but this is very rare. The median expense for a dental policy through health insurance brokers is about $200-$350/month.

Lastly, use it every chance you get. You’re paying for it; doesn’t matter if it’s employee benefits or an alternative dental and/or health insurance plan. If you pay into it, you should get just as much out of it. Insurance companies know you are going to use it just as much as you can; some may not like that, but it’s your money and you’re putting it to work for your oral health and the oral health of your family. If you chip a tooth, see the dentist. If you have tooth sensitivity, see your dentist. Gums bleeding? See your dentist. Eventually you will hit the end of the deductible, the portion you have to kick in every year before the insurance company starts paying for everything. It also helps if you can get a policy whereby you are paying the least deductible possible.

It’s all a matter of shopping around. Be smart about what policy you choose. Read the fine print too. Then you should be able to get the best value from your dental care.

Guest author Drew James is a proud provider of HR services, and an expert in Texas employee benefits. When out of the office, he enjoys plenty of backyard projects as well as being an amateur photographer.