Everything You Need To Know About Dental Insurance
The cost that you incur for your dental treatments each year, could be a hefty amount. Although it might look unnecessary to you at first, do calculate the expense for your dental treatments each year, and you would realize why you should probably get dental insurance.
If you are considering to get dentally insured, you would find everything you need to know about them in this article. For starters, you would be given a plan consisting of a network of dentists for you to choose from. If your regular dentist is one of them, the plan would be less expensive for you. If you don’t know a dentist, you can choose one from the network, and the plan would again be less expensive for you. However, if you choose to have a dentist who is not included in the insurance company’s network, be prepared to pay a hefty amount for a plan.
The following are the must-know facts about dental insurances that you need to go through before you get dental insurance.
- They Come in Categories:
Most insurance companies categorize dental procedures as being preventive, basic or major. Preventive procedures include sealants, X-rays, and other preventive measures like a regular dental cleaning. Basic procedures include extractions, fillings, treatment for common oral diseases and more. Major procedures include procedures like crowns, bridges, and dentures.
Usually, insurance companies pay for 100% of the preventive procedures, 60–80% of basic procedures, and 10–20% of major procedures.
2. Deductibles:
Deductibles are the minimum amount that needs to be paid by the patient as a part of the plan before the insurance company pays for the treatment. You may also require to make a co-payment at the time of the treatment, depending on the clauses set out by your insurance company.
The remaining balance in the bill that you have to pay after the insurance company has paid its part, is called co-insurance. You may read more about deductibles, co-payments, and co-insurances at healthcare.gov.
3. Waiting Period:
There is a period which you have to wait for before you can claim your insurance for dental treatment. Various companies have various waiting periods set out for their customers. However, it depends mainly on the category of dental procedure that you need the money for.
4. Annual Maximums:
Annual maximums refer to the amount of money that the insurance company is willing to pay for a patient in a year. This depends on the amount of monthly premiums that the customer is paying to the insurance company. Approximately, most dental insurance companies cover for $1,500 in a year on an average.
5. Cosmetic Procedures do not Come Under Most Dental Insurance Plans:
Veneers, contouring, tooth shaping, whitening, implants, and other cosmetic dental procedures are not covered by most of the dental insurance plans. This is because most of these procedures are not considered to be necessary dental treatments. However, some insurance companies do cover for them, such as CarePlus Dental Plans.
6. Tax Credits:
If you have leftover tax credits from healthcare.gov, you can apply them to dental insurance premiums, in case your medical insurance plan does not cover dental treatments.
As per an article published in Investopedia, “Any leftover tax credit not used to pay for your family’s health insurance purchased through Healthcare.gov may be applied to pediatric dental insurance premiums if your medical insurance policy does not include dental coverage. If your health insurance policy includes children’s dental coverage, you cannot use tax credits to buy an additional plan.”
That is pretty much everything you need to know about dental insurances! Now that you are empowered with the knowledge to help you decide on a plan that suits you the best, we always recommend you to conduct holistic comparative research, taking every possible dental insurance plan into consideration.
