Insurance: Financing Dental Healthcare the Advantages of Funding

From routine cleanings to fillings to crowns and major oral surgery to routine cleaning to crowns to fillings, the costs involved in keeping your teeth and gums healthy in good condition can be quite substantial. Fortunately, dental insurance represents an affordable and easily accessible way to help control these costs, allowing your loved ones or valued greatly regarded employees to receive the oral healthcare services they require. Although affordable and accessible, dental insurance plans raise several coverage questions, and the key highlights below will help you answer these questions and better understand which types of coverage are typically included under a New Hampshire dental insurance policy.

Complete Coverage for Preventive Care:

Providing Complete Coverage for preventive care, your New Hampshire dental insurance  plan will normally pay 100 percent of the cost of the entire cleanings, x-rays, oral exams and fluoride treatments for children. Unlike other dental procedures that often require a waiting period, most dental insurance plans will begin taking care of routine preventative care from day one of your policy. Considering the expenses involved in just a routine cleaning, especially if x-rays and fluoride treatment are required, complete coverage for preventive care can save you hundreds, even thousands of dollars over the long term.

Dental Insurance Provides Partial Coverage for Basic Services

Unlike preventive care and diagnostic services, if you or someone insured under your dental plan requires fillings, restoration, extractions, root canal therapy, or treatment for gum disease, you will not normally receive complete coverage for these basic services. Instead, dental insurance typically covers 80 percent of these costs after you have met a small deductible. In addition, most plans include a six-month waiting period before covering basic services.

Are Major Services Covered?

If family members or employees require crowns, inlays, onlays, bridges and partial or full dentures, costs can be considerable, so a common concern is how much coverage dental insurance provides for these major services. While every plan varies, most dental insurance plans pay 50 percent for major procedures after a small deductible. In regard to dental implants, only some dental insurance plans will provide coverage for this procedure under major services. Like basic services, coverage for major services also includes a waiting period, which is generally six or 12 months.

Does Dental Insurance Provide Coverage for Braces?

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 5,000 orthodontists employed in our country as of 2008. Naturally, this means that many kids now wear braces at some stage of their lives, so you wonder how much coverage, if any, you will receive for orthodontics. Although all plans differ, you have the option of including orthodontics coverage in your dental insurance plan, as well as the choice between child-only or adult and child orthodontics coverage. This type of coverage normally pays 50 percent and covers the treatment of crooked teeth, or by official definition, dental malocclusions and oral cavity anomalies. If you choose to include orthodontics coverage in your New Hampshire dental insurance plan, you will likely experience a 24-month waiting period before receiving this type of coverage. Considering that a full orthodontics treatment can cost thousands of dollars, orthodontics coverage can represent an extremely cost effective component of dental insurance.