Insurance Companies Force Dentists to Work Cheaper, New Bill

The discounted rates on dental services have brought about disputes between the Florida Dental Association and some major insurance companies on the market.

The seed of the fight is centering on patients who exhaust their coverage limits on insurance, but still need additional dental treatment.

Dental practitioners say that insurance companies basically force them into charging patients very cheap rates for these additional treatments, practice which will send more money to the budget of the insurers.

Clearwater Republican Ed Hooper, who is agreeing to the new bill, sends dentists the message that if they do not offer coverage for these extra treatments, they also should not be the ones to set the price.

Despite the rage of the dentists, the Senate has approved a bill which requires dentists to charge such discounted rates from all the patients who require treatments beyond their insurance coverage limits.

Organizations such as the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida, Humana do have a similar standing point to that of the dentists: increased prices for the patients’ insurance policies will make them avoid the dentist offices even if they need treatment urgently.

Certainly this is a bad health choice for the patients and a significantly lower profit for the dentists.

People generally buy low-cost dental insurance policies, because obviously that is all they can afford.

Certain “extra” dental treatments have been offered low cost as well, but from now on if patients are overcharged they will choose to avoid going to the dentist’s whenever possible.

However, insurers are one step ahead, and they know that most of the dentists will sign the contracts, and agree to these forced rules and regulations, simply because otherwise they would risk losing a great number of patients.