I need to have dental work done, but I don’t have dental insurance. (I did, but I don’t now. It’s a long story and, IMHO, not worth recounting here.) I work for myself, so I have no dental coverage through my employer.
I need to have dental work done, and I’d like to have it done soon. I’m looking for a good dental discount plan (DDP), so that I don’t have to wait 6 months or a year or whatever for coverage of procedures that I might need. I’m having trouble finding reviews of different DDPs. Does any of you have one that you’d recommend? If so, I’d love to hear what it is.
FWIW–I’m in NYC. AFAIK, most of the dental discount companies are nationwide. If someone in a different part of the country has had a good experience with a particular DDP, then I’d probably have a similar experience in NYC. (That assumes, of course, that there are dentists near me who take the plan. But I can call around and find out about that.)
I’d appreciate any info or tips you could give me.
I haven’t used one in years, but careington was always good and had the best prices from what I saw back when I was cost comparing them. However that was over a decade ago, it may be different now. I used careington for about 10 years until I got dental insurance.
What kind of work do you need done? Fillings or root canals and crowns? Fillings are fairly cheap with a dental discount plan, I was only paying $50 per tooth back when I had a dental discount plan, and an inspection/cleaning/xrays usually came to less than $100. However when I had a root canal done it was about $450 for the root canal and another $450 for the crown. Still not terrible, but almost a grand.
Here is a fee schedule for careington. Fillings are about $50-100 for amalgams, resin fillings are $70-200.
If you need dental work done, make sure you get it done when a filling will do the job. A root canal and crown is 10x more expensive than a filling.
If you need orthodontics work, dental discount plans aren’t very good. Most only offer a 20% off discount.
Medical dental tourism. Spain is good and cheap (My ex in-laws live there, and some of their guests had dental work done while staying there) and Spain is also a lovelytravel destination. So is Belgium, and Poland..