Is dental insurance worth it?
Several years ago the writer of this post decided to cancel his dental insurance. Recently we saw an article on one of the news TV stations talking about whether it is worthwhile to have dental insurance or not. This is article triggered the following post about, “is dental insurance worth it?”.
The writers dental insurance was costing approximately $2100 per year for both him and his wife. It covered all of the normal dental procedures, with special procedures included but only at a rate of 50%. This seemed rather expensive to us and after looking at the past expenses that we had from a dental perspective we decided to become self funding insurers for our own dental expenses.
Is dental insurance worth it – Cost
The average cost of our dental expenses for the year was approximately $500. This included two cleanings per year for both people and also x-rays every two years. The insurance we were paying at the time was $2100 as previously mentioned. It seem like a no-brainer to stop paying for dental insurance, which is exactly what we did.
The following year wouldn’t you know it, we had a special dental expense, a root canal in addition to our normal dental checkups. The total cost of the root canal plus the dental checkups came to approximately $2500.
Fortunately we had the $2000 that we saved from not paying our dental insurance and this also coupled with the dental cleaning put us $500 in the hole. The following year we only had our dental checkups and cleaning for total of $500. at the end of the second year we were $1000 ahead at the end of the third year we were $2500 ahead!
During the first year we wondered if we’ve made the right decision, it turns out that from a purely cash flow perspective we in fact have made the right decision to self fund our own dental expenses. Even if we had still had dental insurance, they would only have paid 50% of the root canal cost so we where still having to pay a significant amount of money in addition to the regular annual premium for dental insurance.
Conclusion
Paying for our own dental expenses, in other words self insuring ourselves has been the right decision for our family.
The savings that we capture year after year will more than pay for many of the expenses that we expect to have for dental cleaning, and other emergency dental requirements over the coming years. It is the right decision for our family.
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October 24th, 2015 at 6:38 am
I don’t know how old you equipment is but when I first got my full face mask, I had to pberlom keeping it on my face but then I experienced the same pberlom as you, it wouldn’t stay on my face. I hope your pberlom will be as simple as mine was to fix, I had cut my hair and the straps had to be readjusted. Put the mask on your face, start with the top and tightened it slightly until you tightened the bottom. Reposition the mask over your nose so that it is comfortable and then tightened the straps until you have a comfortable fit. I hope this will help you as it helped my pberlom.