What is the Difference Between Dental Insurance and Low Cost Dental Plans?

In order to maintain a healthy lifestyle, maintaining proper oral hygiene is an integral part of your health. The mouth, containing your teeth, is perhaps the most important part of the human body. As such, it is absolutely essential that you are concerned with the prevention and repair of any dental problems you may incur.

It is a sad fact that most people do not have any type of dental coverage whatsoever. Due to many corporations cutting costs - especially in our economic condition today - dental benefits for employees have been thrown out of the window, due to their high expense. Many people who have become victim to this cost-cutting problem have always visited the dentist for routine care, but now find that they cannot afford them. How can they get these benefits that they once had, and what is the difference between dental insurance and low cost dental plans?

What most people do not realize is that dental insurance is not offered to individuals or families. It is only offered to employers, who include it as part of a benefits package, where the employees pay a monthly premium for their coverage.

Dental insurance has a fair share of drawbacks when compared to a low cost dental plan. Insurance plans:

• have a cap on spending
• have a deductible or non-eligibility issues
• have a lot of services that are not covered
• have long waiting periods
• have pre-existing condition clauses

Insurance also entails the need to process claims, which can be a long, drawn out process. Dental insurance mainly covers the most common services, such as teeth polishing and the most common exams, and the deductibles for such services can range from $20-$50USD. While dental insurance can cost $100USD or more a month, the choice of providers is completely up to the policy holder.

Low cost dental plans, in contrast, are open to everyone. They provide membership into a service partnership which connects patients with dental care providers at deeply discounted rates. While there is a monthly fee to such services, it is generally much lower than that of dental insurance.

Dental plans such as this are very easy to join, as there is no paperwork, and everything can be handled online. There is no red tape or claims to file. All you do is show your membership card at the dentist's office and pay the co-payment required. The dental plan you select takes care of all of the rest.

With low cost dental plans, you can get deeply reduced costs on dental exams, teeth polishing, teeth pulling, root canals, and other routine procedures. On average, dental plan members save up to 60% off of regular dental fees, which costs less than most dental insurance deductible.

Even if you do have dental insurance, ask how you can use your policy in conjunction with your low cost dental plan to receive even deeper, special discounts.

Are you interested in finding low cost dental plans for yourself or your family? If so, I found a great website that will help point you in the right direction. It is called Low Cost Dental Plans.

They have plenty of information there, plus you can find links to companies where you can do a free search for low cost dental services in your area -- and find services for as little as $7.95 a month.

by dr. tom kilpratt