Cheap but Good Dental Insurance

We do not have dental insurance either. My husband is self employed and it cost a fortune to maintain insurance policies. I spoke with my dentist about coverage and he said it would be cheaper to pay out of pocket because once you pay the high price premiums monthly and finish paying what the insurance company doesn't cover, it's cheaper in the end to pay as you go. My dentist said, unles you are with a big corportation that can offer good dental plan, it's not worth it.
If you find out anything different, please let me know. I love my dentist and don't want to switch.
I hope your day is super!
Deborah

Be sure you are getting an insurance and not a "dental plan"- a dental plan is a discount program, many dentist will just passs on the same discount (about 10-20%) if asked) and witha plan you will end up with many hidden fees ( made up codes that are normally included). Any other insurance such as a PPO or an endemnity should be worth it if you have a lot of work to get done.
Good Luck,
I. Blaess DDS

We do not have dental insurance either and from what I understand you end up paying almost as much in premiums as you would for the dental work. I take my son to Little Smiles. Dr. Jenny is reasonable, and when he had to have major work done (crowns, extractions, and a false tooth), she let us pay her in a few payments. She is really amazing. Good luck!

IME you get worse than what you pay for with dentistry. Very easy to get taken advantage of because, frankly, you're vulnerable as a consumer. Usually the better ones do NOT advertise heavily and do NOT send out tons of coupons in the mail and do NOT reiterate over and over again that their office takes every insurance under the sun as a preferred provider. However, you can find great quality dentists after some research. You've already gotten good advice here. Something I always find out is how many procedures that should be referred to a specialist are kept in-house by the dentist because that reveals the practice philosophy. Hard to find this out but you can. Maybe try to talk to a specialty office in person and see if they can give you some "ideas" of good general practitioners. I've seen a lot of crapola pediatric dentists so be very careful with any of them, because they can royally mess over your kids and still have the sweetest bedside manner. Good luck from a dental insider.

I have met life too.
It's covered by our company's insurance so unfortunately I can't tell you what it costs.

If you know a dentist, talk to the billing person at the office. They may not be able to tell you costs, but they can tell you which insurance plans are the best to deal with and which ones are ones to avoid. At least that will give you a starting point of which companies you would like to look into.

There are no "good" dental plans out there. We ended up dropping our dental insurance (through hubs work) after they paid only $.88 on a $288 claim. Yes, thats 88 cents! They would also not cover 100% of our semi-annual cleanings, either. We were paying more into it than we were getting out so we cancelled. DH is covered because it is free but the rest of us are not covered.

i tried to skimp on dental plans last year, i tried avia dental, and the only dentist in my area to accept it was a smarmy slimy man, who tried to get me to get $2000 worth of uneccessary work, so the money i saved on a cheap dental plan was negated.
i have a plan with metlife now, i am not sure if they do individual plans, but my dentist is top notch - woodlands dental group, they accept any major insurance