Hi-I’m interested in getting dental implants and my mother needs help with her dentures, but Medicaid doesn’t cover all dental precedures.
Does anyone know of any free dental insurance plans I can sign up for-that my mother and family can use?
Free insurance? What a country!
You think that’s something? In Soviet Russia, insurance frees you!
But seriously, are you in the US, renegade21? I doubt you can find free insurance, but if there is a dental college in your area, they might be worth talking to, for at least reduced rates.
Some Public Health Departments can & will help.
My Dad sold Dental Equipment & supplies, & he helped our local Health Dept set up 2 units (chair/lights/drill) & donated lots of supplies, too.
When you find out about those implants, let me know. My missus needs a few of them and they go for $1-2K each, and they are considered a high-end solution to a problem that can be solved by much less expensive means via traditional dentistry, so guess which one the insurance company will pay for, if they pay anything at all :(.
???
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
I am certain there are no truly free insurance plans for anything out there.
And not many that will sign you up and then pay out thousands of dollars for a pre-existing condition. Plus the dental insurances I have come across are not really insurance policies anyway - they pay out relatively small sums, then abandon you when things begin to get costly, which is exactly the opposite of the way insurance should work. Both my current and previous dental insurance have an annual limit of $1,000.
Yeah, they are dental “plans.” I’ve been self-employed since 2001, and I pay for my own health insurance out of pocket. It’s absurdly expensive in new york state. :eek: I haven’t yet found a dental plan that makes any sense. In every case, the annual premiums significantly exceed the maximum payout.
The same is true for health insurance, in the sense that I’m paying thousands more than I would if I were paying out of pocket for an annual physical and the occasional office visit. The only difference is that with the health insurance, I’ve at least got some coverage if a major medical event occurs.
They are insurance policies, but they have maximum yearly expenditures and maximum lifetime benefits and so on. They may be crap, but they certainly are insurance policies by every definition of the term.
I feel we’re lucky to have free checkups twice a year, free x-rays once a year and 50-75% of the cost of fillings, crowns, etc. paid by the insurance company. I’ve had many jobs that didn’t offer dental insurance, and I lived in the UK for several years, where the NHS-provided dentists only seem to want to pull teeth.
TANSTAAFDS?
(by analogy with TANSTAAFL)
Really-what about dental clinics?
The taxpayers pay for those.
And don’t let them convince you that dental implants are always permanent. They can fail, and cost you just as much pain and suffering and money to have them removed. And $1-2K each sounds very cheap.
There are some dental insurances which are very close to free. In reality, they are a discount plan if you go to one of their plan dentists. But in your case, it’s not a bad idea. Call around and ask some local dentist offices if they have anything like that.
well dental clinics are not insurance. But my point is actually that while someone else may be paying the bill, say the Gov’t or doners, truly free services don’t exist and certainly not ones that pay bills. Money always has to come from somewhere.
free services do exist. But the idea that one would make up a financial plan where one is certain to lose money doesn’t seem likely.
Agreed. I paid 6K for 2 implants-and that didn’t include the crown. That was extra.
Patients are also charged based on a sliding scale. Ivylad was going to one until they closed. They were staffed with recent graduates from dental school at U of F, so they people were getting some experience before they hung up their own shingle.
Most dental plans pay very little toward or actually exclude implants. Even with fairly good dental insurance, crowns are going to cost you some serious money.
For example, I just got a crown on a molar. It was a pretty basic procedure (no root canal involved) and the only thing that I upgraded was to porcelein. My employer subsidised insurance (not totally free) is paying 50% of the $1200. It is one of the procedures that is considered major and therefore doesn’t get the 80% coverage.
Your best bet is what others have said: go to a clinic affiliated with a dental school.