Going to the Dentist... wish me luck.

[UrbanChic]

Sweet lord, Tristan! I’ll be making my appointment Monday.

Thanks for the info, peri. I’ve printed it.

[Tristan]

@peri

Give the office your medical insurance info and ask them to submit a pretreatment request for the extractions of the impacted wisdom teeth. This is standard at the oral surgeon’s office we refer to. Medical, if there is coverage, frequently pays more of the charges for these extractions. Not all dentists will do this, but they all can.

Ask them to send in a pretreatment request to your dental insurance for ALL the work needed, while you are at it. Unless they have worked with your exact policy before, or are a Participating Provider in a PPO, any numbers they gave you were estimates.

Find out when the calendar year starts for your policy. You listed a lot of work to be done; a number of visits over the next couple months will be needed to finish. Perhaps the most pessing work can be done now, with the remainder after your policy rollover date. Tnat will allow you to take advantage of the new year’s benefits, reducing your out of pocket costs. With all that work you are still looking at a huge hit to the wallet.

(And you’ll probably need a crown on that root canal treated tooth. Add another $1000 or so. Oh, yeah, and a bridge to replace that 5th extracted tooth.)

Dental insurance is my life.

Yeah, I’m learning up on all that stuff… pretty odd. I’m actually part of a DMO, and the insurance lady at the DDS office was pretty cool. She informed me right off the bat that it was just a rough estimate, etc. etc.

I didn’t check to see if my actual Medical would cover anything though… that’s pretty cool.

Actually, the 5th extract is right next to the wisdom tooth, so I don’t know if I’ll need a bridge or not. We’ll find out, I guess.

Right now my mouth is a giant ball of fire. Wish I could have taken a Vicodin before work… Hehehe…