Supplemental Dental Insurance - Do You Need It?
Supplemental dental insurance is dental insurance that pays up to 50% of your dental care costs.
The idea behind supplemental dental insurance is that you already have some sort of dental insurance coverage in place. Supplemental dental insurance picks up the portion of your dental care that is not covered by your primary dental insurance. You must have primary dental insurance before you can purchase supplementary dental insurance coverage.
Individual Dental Needs
Each of us has different needs for dental care; some people need more expensive dental care than others. The reason for this disparity can be any one of a number of different factors. Patients who need more dental care than normal are good candidates for supplemental dental insurance
If a patient's mother had certain vitamin deficiencies while she was pregnant with the patient, these deficiencies can manifest themselves as weakness or discoloration in the patient's permanent adult teeth.
Other patients may have certain dental disorders because of inadequate nutrition while they were children, because they ate too much sugar as children, or because of excessive thumb-sucking as a child.
Some patients have a physiology that requires more dental treatment than would ordinarily have been necessary. Patients with big teeth and a small jaw will probably need to have one or more teeth extracted in preparation for the patient receiving orthodontic care.
Some patients have conditions at birth, such as a cleft palate, that requires ongoing dental and surgical treatment over the years.
Finally, some patients need supplemental dental insurance to repair damage done to their teeth due to neglect, dental malpractice, or drug use. Methamphetamine use, in particular, is devastating to the teeth, and patients who recover from methamphetamine addiction will need the kind of intensive, expensive dental care that is perfectly suited to supplemental dental insurance.
Choosing Supplemental Dental Insurance
When selecting supplemental dental insurance, ask some of the same questions as you would ask about ordinary dental insurance. Find out if you can choose your own dentist or if you have to select a dentist in a certain provider network.
Ask what kinds of services are covered by the plan. There is no sense in buying a supplemental dental insurance plan that does not cover the services you think you will need in the coming years.
Find out how the payment process works. Do you have to pay for dental services up front and seek reimbursement from the supplemental dental insurance provider, or will the provider make payments directly to the dentist?
