Dentists and Dental Insurance

My dentist is a friendly soul so we often engage in conversation when I'm in his office. He's Republican and religious, I'm a Democrat and not religious and yet we enjoy our conversations.

He holds the typical Republican opinion that Medicare is bad, Obamacare is bad, and Obama is bad, yada yada yada. However, over time I noticed he had nothing to say about the prices he's charging, about all the fancy equipment he has added to his practice, or the inadequacy of dental insurance.

One day I decided to bring that up so I asked why there seems to be less scrutiny on dentists than doctors. Dentists seem to be free to do whatever they want and charge whatever they please. It was a long conversation but the short of it was the folks overseeing healthcare do not include teeth.

Now that's a bummer. I think teeth are very important to overall health. For whatever reason dental care has not come under the same guidelines as medical care.

I also learned from him that dental insurance works nothing like health insurance. I've since investigated this and he seems to be right. Most dental plans consist of you paying a set amount of money in a given year and that's about what you get out of it.  I think pet insurance may work this way and perhaps concierge medicine.

With health insurance, if I have a major illness the expenses will be covered far beyond my premium costs for the year, not so with dental insurance.

I need to change my dental insurance plan so I called my dentist's office and noticed the receptionist seemed hesitant to talk a lot about other insurance companies, not because she didn't want to tell me, but I decided maybe they weren't seeing a lot of patients with dental insurance. I asked and was told they really are not seeing a lot with insurance anymore for a variety of reasons. One being most employers no longer cover its cost. Another being that people are realizing it's pretty much a wash. You get out what you pay in.

She told me they had a little in-house policy for patients who wished to make a monthly payment. She didn't seem to be pushing it. Apparently it's offered more as a convenience to patients rather than a money making project. It works much the same, a monthly premium and 15% off dental procedures above the amount of your yearly premiums.

I had never given a lot of thought to dental insurance. It's not very expensive so I just kept it when I retired. Funny though I don't have vision insurance to purchase glasses. Always figured that didn't pay enough to be worth the trouble.

What's your opinion of dental care and dental insurance?