Imagine you go to the dentist with an achy tooth. They say you need a root canal and a crown, costing around $3,000. And if that isn’t painful enough, you then learn you’ll have to pay $2,000 out of pocket, even though you have dental insurance.
How did this happen? Isn’t the point of insurance that it covers larger procedures?
“There’s this general misunderstanding that everything will be covered if my dentist recommends it, which absolutely isn’t true,” said Dr. Mackenzie Kelley, a dentist in Denver.
Most patients assume dental insurance works like health insurance, which is designed to protect against high, unexpected costs, said Dr. Zachary Brian, director of the Program for Oral Health Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Dental insurance, however, works more like a “discount plan,” or coupon, rather than true insurance, Dr. Kelley said. It helps with routine maintenance but not the full cost of major dental work.