Looking for Dental Insurance

I have dental insurance through my BC/BS health insurance. About $100/year. See if your health insurance offers something similar. I use it on 2 cleanings/exams per year (with $35 co-pay). If cleanings/exams are usually ~$170 each, I'm paying $170/year to get two. A nice savings. There's also a long price list for how much I'll save on a 100 or so procedures. But the one time I broke a tooth and needed a crown, it was considered elective/cosmetic and not covered. But the dentist claimed by having insurance, I paid ~$600 for a procedure he normally charged $1200. Insurance is clearly playing games about which procedures are necessary and which are elective. The needed ones are probably not often performed. If your problems are not emergencies, make an appointment at your local dental school. Very very cheap. An experienced instructor has to sign off on step 1 before student is allowed to do step 2. So count on things taking all fucking day. But when I got cheap cleanings at the Northwestern University Dental School (before they closed it), the student would do an amazing job to impress his instructor. Then the instructor would essentially repeat the step to see if the student had done it correctly. Then the student would go on to the next step and they'd repeat the drill. I never in my life got better cleanings. And it cost $10. They also did a crown for $250. The funny thing was, I had the same dental student for his last 2 years. When he graduated and they handed me off to another student, my records indicated all sorts of procedures had been done for which my teeth showed no evidence. Student 1 apparently needed to do a certain number of these procedures as part of his training and had just put down on my records that he'd done them and got the hell out of Dodge before anyone noticed the scam.

I've been told that private dental insurance is basically a waste of money. you end up spending roughly the same amount after factoring in co-pays and monthly payments.

get a premium dental rider on your existing healthcare policy. works for us.

^

What he said!

Very true

I had one place find out I had 5K worth of insurance running out. He got real excited and when I told him I wasn't able to use it because of the high co-pays he waived them and was still real happy. I had 3 root canals and crowns done. The thing is they ran out of money and left one of my root canals without a crown which is only partly there. I am sure that if he was looking out for my best interest he could have worked on this tooth besides some of the other work. As for insurance I think it is mostly smoke and mirrors. But I have found it is so difficult to shop around you almost need the insurance to get the negioated rates. There are dental memberships you can get if you google them, they offer discounted rates and free check ups and cleanings. I don't know exactly how they work, I think it is more smoke and mirrors, but it looks good on the surface. The best thing may be to go to Mexico. The care is supposed to be top notch and around 90% less.

My uncle lives fairly close to the border and he says they use the US labs for things such as crowns. He says the quality is at least as good as here. Some places cater to Americans and pick you up at your hotel and bring you over the border. They are used to handling mutiple issues quickly, though things such as crown take mutiple visits, at least a few days apart I think. Still worth the hotel bill. I don't think you can get a rider on your normal health insurance in MA, so it may not be an option to some. Here is a website that list dental plans, not really insurance. I tried asking a dentist I had about them and didn't get a complete answer so I don't know. It looks like if you don't have insurance it might at least mean you know the prices before you get your bill. http://www.dentalplans.com/ It looks like a 20% discount which is less than insurance companies get anyway. So you have to pay someone else to get you the same price they charge insurance companies. Doesn't make complete sense to me, that why I said smoke and mirrors. It is kind of like when I cut my finger without insurance and the clinic charged me $800 and it didn't even need stiches. Insurance would have been charged $200.

also, south carolina has many discount places. can get you info. aunt's bf just got 12 implants for 4k

wtf did he do to his teeth he needed 12 implants for????

South Carolina?

Yeah, more info on SC would be great. I could 't find anything.