Dental Insurance : What is Dental Insurance

Introduction :
Dental insurance is an insurance coverage to help us protect from the huge expenses associated with dental problems like tooth extraction, root canal treatment, cosmetic surgery etc. Through the life time of a person, majority of the dental needs of a person are non-catastrophic and relatively low in cost. However, even a small event, which may require a dental surgery will set you back by a few thousand dollars. Due to this, you will find that dental insurance is typically structured to provide benefits in a different fashion than most of the other types of insurance we buy, like health insurance.

How is Dental Insurance different :
Most dental insurance plans are ‘preventive’ in nature, while other health insurances are ‘treatment’ in nature. The type of insurance provided by dental insurance can be termed as ‘preventive’ because the primary goal of a typical dental plan is to insure that the covered individual receives regular preventive dental care including checkups, dental cleanings, x-rays etc. Such a type of insurance is is based on the fact that the majority of the dental treatment an individual requires through his life time is non-catastrophic and is not caused by unpredictable events like accidents. Most of the dental problems are caused by minor problems, which were not detected and dealt within an appropriate time frame like a small cavity can lead to the entire tooth (or even teeth) getting decayed. Dental Insurance companies know that if they can encourage a covered member to seek regular preventive dental care, then that person’s potential for needing extensive dental treatment during their lifetime will be greatly reduced, thereby, reducing the insurance company’s cost for providing dental care for that individual.

Structure of Dental Insurance Policies :
Most dental insurance plans are set up so to encourage their covered individuals to seek regular preventive dental care (checkups, dental cleanings, x-rays, etc) at-least twice a year. These procedural checkups help minimize the need for more extensive dental treatments like tooth extraction, root canals, dental crowns etc. The way this has been achieved is that the coverage member shoulders a greater portion of the cost of extensive dental treatments than they do for procedural or ‘preventive’ dental care. This makes dental treatment and insurance easily affordable to the members. While dental insurers are no doubt interested in the general well being of the covered members, lower dental expenses for their members also translates into greater profits for them.