Compare Dental Insurance Plans Online

by Selena
(Louisville, Kentucky)

I would like to compare dental insurance plans online and share with you my views about it. I started wondering at some point in time that if the network dentist made that much reduction in the cost of his services, how then does his business become more lucrative?

I changed my insurance plan from PPO to indemnity plan because it allows me to choose my own dentist to perform the dental health care that I need. If you will compare insurance plans this is more beneficial despite the lower reduction and the longer time it takes to claim your refund. In PPOs, the kind of dental care I get is affected by the network dentist?s own earning benefits.

How Network Dentists Earn in PPO Insurance Plans
The system works this way: Dentists are awarded with fees for every insurance member that nominates him as their dentist. So the more insured patients he had, the more fees he will earn on top of the fees he will collect from the patient. The fee rewards are to compensate for the reductions he made in the cost of his services.

Hypothetically, if he gets $12 for every member patient, 100 patients in a month will earn him about $1200 in a month. If you will add up all the reduction he makes, the $1200 is still not enough to make up for his loss. However, even if he wants to increase the number of patients that will enroll under his dental services, this would only mean more reduced prices, more work, more overhead and probably he would not be able to manage doing the dental work on all of them because there are other patients to attend to.

I also learned that whether the enrolled patient goes to his dental clinic to have some dental work done or not, the network dentist is entitled to his fees. However, if a patient will not avail his dental insurance plan, it will only mean that sooner or later the patient will not find the insurance coverage beneficial and will eventually drop out of his insurance membership. This would mean a reduction in the fees awarded to the dentist.

In order to gain from insurance network accreditation, the network dentist should create a balance between treating the member patients with their dental problems and maintaining a reason for them to visit his clinic again and find his services and the dental insurance coverage worth its premiums. However, some network dentist was not able to achieve this; hence, a lot of us became discontented and eventually dropped out of the insurance plan.

My Experience with Indemnity Dental Insurance Plans
I still acknowledge the fact that having a dental insurance plan can still reduce the cost of my dental health care needs. I enrolled in the indemnity type of dental insurance, where I chose my dentist. As the word indemnity connotes, I will only be compensated or indemnified in the form of reimbursement for my dental expenses.

My indemnification or reimbursement will be computed this way:

Cost of root canal charged by my non-network dentist $675

Negotiated cost of root canal charged by network dentist $450
Percentage of insurance indemnification 50%

Amount to be indemnified or reimbursed by the Insurance provider (50% x $450) $225

Compare Dental Insurance Plans in Terms of Cost Reduction

Under Indemnity Plan:
Cost of root canal charged by my non-network dentist $675
Less: Amount to be indemnified or reimbursed by the Insurance provider $225
My Dental Expenses Under Indemnity Plan $450


Under PPO Insurance Plan
Negotiated cost of root canal in network dentist $450
Less: Amount to be indemnified or reimbursed by the Insurance provider $225
My Dental Expenses Under PPO $225

Now consider the following point of views if we compare dental insurance plans:

? If I did not have any insurance coverage, the root canal would cost me $675.

? I will have more cost reduction if my insurance coverage was under the PPO plan because I would be paying only $225 as opposed to the Indemnity plan where I will pay my non-network dentist $450.

? The earnings of the non-network dentist will not be affected if his patient is an insured member. He will be paid in full according to the regular fees that he charges. Any paper work or claims will be done by the member patient.

? The earnings of a network dentist are affected because he pre-negotiated a lower price with the insurance company for the benefit of the insured member. In exchange for the reduction, he will receive a fixed monthly fee. Hence, the network dentist earns less than the non-network dentist in treating insured members.

After I compared dental insurance plans, I decided to get myself indemnity dental insurance plan because the kind of dental health care I get was not affected by the dentists need to put a leverage between his earnings and the work done on the insured patients.

A little reduction in cost goes a long way in terms of dental health care rather than a big reduction in cost but will often require me to sit in a dentist chair for another dental work that needs to be done. The dental health care costs only add up; hence, I get to incur more dental care expenses than is necessary. That is what I learned when I compared dental insurance plans.

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