Where to buy dental insurance plans online?

Do you want to keep your smile bright without paying too much for it? Find affordable dental insurance online. You can save hundreds of dollars on routine examination, cleanings, dental implants, root canals and other dental care services.

Dental insurance works similar to other types of medical insurance. Once you have signed up for a policy, you will need to pay premiums on a yearly or monthly basis. If you have visited the dentist, you need to fill out a claim form and provide receipts for the treatment to refund the costs.

Some types of treatments will not be covered. For example, regular checkups often require a higher level of dental insurance. So before you make a claim, ensure that your treatment is included in your policy.

Buying dental insurance on the Internet is just like buying it directly through an insurance company or over the telephone. You will be offered the same range of plans, the same coverage, the same benefits, and the same dental care.

However, when you buy dental coverage online, you will enjoy greater convenience. For example, you can shop from the privacy of your home anytime you want. And, you can easily compare dozens of plans to find the best match.

Nipped & Tucked

One of the curious aspects of the health-care crisis that accelerated in the past decade was the number of city specialists in reconstructive surgery, dermatology, and dentistry who simply stopped trying to treat illness. Alienated by the hassle and minimal compensation of insurance companies, they decided to do cosmetic work only. So you had dermatologists who never uttered the words “body check,” and ENT specialists who wouldn’t deal with people who couldn’t swallow. David Hidalgo, the former head of plastic surgery at Sloan-Kettering, who was once considered one of the best surgeons for breast reconstruction, even left the cancer institute to do aesthetic surgery full-time.


But now things have started to shift, as lifestyle medicine loses some of its allure—and paying customers. Liposuction was down 25 percent between 2007 and 2008; it’s a bellwether of ugly times ahead if certain doctors don’t adapt. “A lot of guys are suddenly opening their eyes and saying, ‘I haven’t done anything but cosmetics for years,’ ” says Fifth Avenue plastic surgeon John E. Sherman. “These guys are really panicking.” As a result, “plastic surgeons are trying to do hospital work—ulcers that aren’t healing, wounds, etc.,” says Minas Constantinides, board member of the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Now “patients don’t want to pay,” which means figuring out what insurance companies will reimburse on.

“We did very little general dentistry before, but now it’s 40 percent of my practice,” says Dr. Lana Rozenberg, who created the concept of the “dental day spa” and perfected the smiles of Scarlett Johansson and Kristin Davis. “There was such an emphasis on aesthetics that people would come in wanting veneers, and they had broken teeth, but they would say, ‘We’ll take care of those later.’ Now the priorities have shifted to fixing what needs to be fixed.”

Just last year, the waiting room of Dr. David Colbert’s sleek lower–Fifth Avenue loft was filled with socialites seeking anti-aging light therapy and lip-plumping Perlane. Now he treats rashes. “Injectables on a face could run about $800 for a visit, and these medical cases aren’t usually big-ticket items,” Colbert says, shrugging. Increasingly, patients “ask which procedures insurance will pay for.”

“It’s definitely a change,” says Debra Jaliman, a Fifth Avenue dermatologist, who’s doing 25 percent more medical work this year. “I actually like it, because I get to solve interesting problems. But I hear a lot of my colleagues complaining: ‘Why am I stuck doing this stuff at this stage of my career?’ ”

There’s an upside to this, of course. Some doctors actually miss doctoring. “Ninety percent of my income was cosmetic; it was more lucrative,” says Sherman. “Eyelid surgery takes 45 minutes, and the going rate is $6,000 to $12,000.” Meanwhile, a trauma case could go five to ten hours for a fraction of that. With aesthetic surgery off, trauma has become a bigger part of his practice. “This town can no longer support 350 board-certified plastic surgeons doing only cosmetic work, not to mention all the specialties like dermatology and ENT that turned to cosmetics. The emphasis over the last decade was to forget where we started, but now the switch is on. One day the faucet is turned off, and you can say, ‘Thank God I can still do something that is rewarding.’ ”

Recession decays dental care

It's not just the stock market and the nation's job market feeling the sting of the recession — dental care is also feeling the painful decay of the economy.

"Hundreds of thousands of people are opting out of dental insurance, because they think it's not a necessary evil," said James Ekbatani, CEO of Winter Park-based CorporateDentalPlans.com. "So we said, 'Let's search for an alternative that makes sense.'"

CorporateDentalPlans.com and TheDentalCard.com are discount dental care programs that give individuals dental care coverage options.

The program is an alternative to insurance and offers over 30 different plans to suit the needs of individuals, families or companies. It can save consumers up to 60 percent on dental services, regardless of pre-existing conditions, and has enrolled more than 100,000 dentists nationwide.

"Even if you have insurance … you end up paying a premium for every month for dental insurance and it's limited to maybe a thousand dollars in benefits, but with the dental card … you're not paying for all these premiums and only getting a maximum of maybe a thousand dollars," he said.

Dino Soriano, a member of the plan, said he saved 600 dollars on a crown he recently received.

"It paid for itself five times over," he said. "And the service was great."

James Ekbatani said he is hoping more people take advantage of the low-cost dental plan because dental care is not something that should be neglected.

Lack of proper dental care can lead to serious health conditions, such as sight problems, strokes and heart attacks.

"Health care and dental care go hand-in-hand … and periodontal disease affects 75 percent of people over 35," Ekbatani said. "We focus a lot on prevention."

Dental resources for your child

Toothache pain is miserable for anyone, but especially for kids. In most cases, pain from decayed and abscessed teeth can be prevented by having routine exams and xrays to check between the teeth. Dental problems are best treated as soon as they are discovered.

Children in Colorado are fortunate to have access to dental care regardless of their income level. The best source for kids, especially if they have multiple problems, is a pedodontist. This is a dental specialist who has had at least 2 years of training beyond dental school. Not only do are they trained in the latest dental procedures, they also have extensive training in behavior management for kids.
Many pedodontists accept Medicaid and CHP in their private practice, so if a child is covered by either of these, they can be seen by a specialist. Many of the children’s dental offices around town are not staffed by pedodontists, but by general dentists. It is a good idea to check before taking your child for their first visit.

If a family earns too much to qualify for Medicaid and does not have dental insurance, the next resource is Children’s Health Plan Plus (CHPS+). It is administed by Delta Dental and children can be seen at numerous private practices and children’s clinics.

Kids In Need of Dentistry, or KIND, is one of the oldest dental non-profits in the U.S. It was started in 1912 here in Denver to provide dental care to low-income children. There is a clinic at Morey Middle School in Denver as well as clinics in Adams County and Colorado Springs, plus a mobile clinic that travels around the metro area and rural parts of the state. Medicaid and CHP are accepted, but not traditional insurance. If a child has no coverage, they can still be seen for just 10% of regular dental care plus a $20 per-visit fee.

The Healthy Smiles Dental Clinic is at the University Of Colorado Medical Center in Aurora and is a partnership of the dental school and Children’s Hospital. Pedodontic residents as well as undergraduate dental students treat children in a 4000 square foot clinic. If a child has no dental coverage through Medicaid, CHP, or insurance, special payment arrangements are made. There are no residency requirements for children treated there.

Don't put your health at risk

Insurance premiums are rising, but a policy check-up may help reduce costs.

Health fund members feeling the pain of the average 6 per cent increase in premiums that kicked in at the start of the month may feel tempted to take the scalpel to their polices. But they're being warned that some ways of cutting health insurance costs are safer than others.

Restricting benefits, or even excluding certain treatments and procedures, is one way for insurers to reduce premiums so care is needed if you are to avoid ending up with a policy that's next to useless.

As with other forms of insurance, the cheapest policy isn't necessarily the best one and consumers should be aware of this when using online comparison sites.

The Private Health Insurance Ombudsman (PHIO), Samantha Gavel, says that rather than purchasing on price alone, she would "advise people, when they're making any decisions about health insurance, to think about their own health needs and preferences.

"You [may be] getting a cheaper premium but the reason is you're trading off something that you could need access to," she says of policies where savings come from exclusions and restrictions.

The general manager of corporate affairs for the online health insurance broker iSelect, Rohan Martin, says less expensive hospital policies may not cover common services such as obstetrics.

That could be a great way to economise if you're a single male or you're in your late 40s and you've completed your family but it's not a good option for younger people, who might be better served by excluding a treatment such as hip replacement.

The director of health insurance portal OzeCover, Peter Carroll, says exclusions will save you only modest amounts but introduce greater risk than other economies you could make. "Some exclusions that are offered I'd never suggest people take - for example, cardiac procedures," he says.

Martin says people thinking about changing their cover need to consider their state of health, their needs not just today but into the future, along with any tax implications.

Under the Federal Government's "lifetime health cover" rule, introduced in 2000 with the aim of encouraging people to take out health insurance at a younger age, individuals have to pay an additional 2 per cent of premium for every year they delay joining a fund beyond the age of 30.