Dental care is the most expensive out of pocket expense for millions of Americans.
If your molar needs root canal treatment, you need to take out of pocket about $2,000 (root canal costs $1,000 and replacing the tooth with a dental crown costs another $1,000).
Even the best experts say that you should not venture into buying extremely expensive dental insurance, unless you wish to respect all the regular checkups, dental cleanings and other basic coverage offered by the policy.
For major dental treatments, dental insurance is certainly not the best answer.
If you wish to have good dental coverage and backup for a moderate cost, then you should opt for the dental discount plans. These plans vary from as little as $80 and up to about $100/individual dental plans per year.
By paying this membership fee, you will have direct access to a huge network of dental professionals that you can choose from. More and more dentists choose to offer their services through the dental discount plan programs.
Keep in mind that a dental discount plan is not insurance, plus you will not have to:
- fill out any claims forms
- there are no deductibles & no waiting periods
- there are absolutely no age limits imposed
- there is no such thing as a benefit maximum limit per year
- if you have a pre-existing condition, you can still get the dental treatment that you need on a discounted price
Check out below a few examples of savings based on the common dental treatments that you can have access to through a dental discount plan:
Dental examinations
The usual fee for two periodic dental exams is $100. Now, a typical dental savings plan offers a discounted fee of $60 to $70 for the two checkups per year. This is how you can smartly save about $30, or as much as 33% of the real cost for out of pocket expenses.
About the same exact rates apply for children too, so it would be a wise option to choose a family dental discount plan in order to have all the members in your family covered.
Dental cleanings
Then, two routine professional dental cleanings can cost even up to $180. A dental discount plan offers you the same for about $110. As you can note, you just saved $70. Routine cleanings for children are cheaper, at about $125, but through a good plan these are offered for only about $80.
Again, you save here $45. Children also need periodic fluoride treatments to keep dental cavities at bay, and such a plan can offer the two annual treatments for only about $40 (the regular price is approximately $70).
Complete Dentures
Then, one complete denture is quite expensive, at about $1,200. Now with the discounts offered by the dental discount plan, the complete denture will cost you about $800 only. This way, you just saved $300.
Add up all these savings, and you will see that on an annual basis you can save well over $1,500-$2,000 with a well chose dental plan. On average the savings can go from as little as 10%, and as high as 60%.
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