Dental Insurace Question

Dental plan... dental plan... dental plan...

 

I've just had a root canal done last month (from an endodontist) and the price was insane. If you have already visited a dentist in your insurer's network, I doubted you can find a better price elsewhere.

YOu can probably go to another dentist and get an estimate, but I suspected the other dentist might have to examine your teeth all over agian and that might cost money.

 

Does ANYONE have a good dental plan through insurance? Ours through Blue Cross Blue Shield is friggin' horrible.

 

Amen.

It feels like I don't have insurance at all when I goto the dentist.

 

GET A SECOND EXAM. Through personal experience I've found that a lot of these dentists are in cahoots. Ask around your office and see who has a good dentist and go to them. A good dentist is like a good, honest mechanic- once you find one, hang on to them.

Side note- dental plans aren't worth a crap unless you can budget them out year to year. For example- my wife had to have all four wisdom teeth out. We didn't have dental last year, but I looked at the plan, and after our copay and the dental premiums, I came out ahead $600 with dental instead of without. It doesn't pay to just 'have' dental insurance because most of the time you will just use the 'free' exam and cleaning, which costs you about the same in premiums as it would out of pocket.

 

You might have tried this already, but sometimes your regular health insurance company will cover some of the cost of some dental procedures. I have a delta dental plan and when I needed to have my wisdom teeth removed, my BCBS covered almost all of the cost.

 

How do you do that? Did you just give the dentist your BCBC insurance card.

and I have another question not pertaining to this but can someone tell me why my spell checker is not working. sorry for the derailment.thx

 

Dental work is expensive. A root canal is a complex procedure and take a lot of time. What tooth is it?

 

is that an endodontist or general dentist? Molars are difficult, time consuming root canals.

 

Yeah, I just gave the dentist my BCBS card and they checked it for me.

 

the teeth towards the back are usually a lot more time consuming and a lot harder. thats why its so expensive to the a root canal there

 

Mine was around $1000. I suspect the cost of a root canal is relatively standard.

 

I had one done about 20 years ago; seems like the cost was some 7-800 bucks.

Have you looked into local dental schools? I don't think they take insurance but they are deeply discounted and it may end up costing you less out of pocket.

 

you can try ut dental in the med center but i would not with a molar root canal unless endo residents are doing it...i dont know if they have an endo residency though

 

I read that you can get dental work done really cheap by advanced dental students. It is pretty safe, b/c the supervisors are sitting right next to the dental student. Find a local dental school, and call them up.