After years of having absolutely no dental insurance at all, my husband and I finally have found affordable dental insurance coverage. Now is the time to sit down, and figure out exactly what this particular dental plan covers. Perhaps if I can figure this out right now, I won’t get hit with a unexpected bill in the future.
The best way to discover what, exactly, is included in the dental insurance plan is to take the time to read over the booklet that the insurer sends to you. If the information included there does not answer your questions, then I think the next step is to contact your insurance company and directly ask them your specific questions.
On the first page of the booklet, in all caps, and in bold text, sits a warning. It says:
“Note: Coverage under this policy is limited to specified diagnostic and preventative services, fillings, stainless steel crowns, and pulpotomy. No benefits are provided for services not listed in the “What is Covered” section.”
Other warnings follow. “Nothing contained in this Policy restricts or interferes with your right to select the Dentist of your choice”. Then, it switches to bold text, again, to say “but your benefits are reduced when you use a Dentist who is not a Participating Dentist”. I have elected to include the insurers odd choice of capitalization in the quoted statements that appear in this blog.
This lead me to immediately go to my insurers website, and use a search engine to see if my dentist is “a Participating Dentist”. It turns out that the office she works in is listed, but her name is not. The office used to be run by a different dentist, who has since retired.
Does this mean my current dentist is included, or not? Notes at the bottom of the website imply that doctors leave the network all the time, and while the insurer tries to keep up with that, they cannot always do so.
So far, there is no conclusive evidence that my dentist is covered by my new dental plan. I’m going to have to call their office before I make my next dental appointment, and attempt to wrangle this important piece of information out of the secretaries before I can be seen by a dentist.
This insurer has three different dental plans. Not all dentists have agreed to work with this insurer for all three of those plans. I’m going to have to be very specific when I speak with the secretaries at my dentist’s office. Unfortunately, they are closed today, so I left a message. Now, I wait and see if I need to find a new dentist.
There are more warnings in this booklet. It turns out that my dental insurance is not an annual policy. In short, it will expire at the end of each billing cycle, and will be automatically renewed “upon timely payment of your next premium”.
Unless, of course, the insurer decides to cancel my policy, (which it seems it is allowed to do at any time). If we ever end up paying a bill even a day late, it could actually mean that we have lost our dental insurance.
Image by Eric Chan on Flickr