Sorry for the double post. You’ve probably already thought of this, but it might be worth your while to take a full-time job with benefits for a while to get this taken care of. The work sounds extremely expensive, and dental insurers are, as has been noted above, very aware that they’re not running a charity. They have some potential to make money by insuring a whole risk pool (such as all employees at a company) but would have to charge insane amounts to cover individuals, due to what’s called adverse selection (only people who need work want to buy the insurance). Also, once you have the benefits through your own employment, COBRA will allow you to continue them, at a higher cost but still better than individual, for 18 months after you leave the job.
One place that burned me is a major chain Western Dental. They had a come-on that if you paid $75 for insurance they would start the insurance on the same day you came in for a checkup. Too good to be true, insurance that instantly “paid for itself”. Well, he immediately told me I “needed” 4 gold crowns, which would only be partially covered, and be subject to deductable. His claim was that my prior crowns were all done wrong and would fall out soon. Since I didn’t trust him I just waited to see if any of those predictions would come true. Another dentist didn’t mention any problems with those and I got off far cheaper with him uninsured. And that was years ago and my existing crown are all fine.
I’m already past the time window for COBRA–my divorce was final last fall, and my husband changed jobs in August, so the insurance “bubble” only carried until the end of October anyway. I was never on his new insurance at all.
As for taking a full time job… um, no can do. 1) I’m a single parent with no friends or family within a several-state-radius who could help watch my child. 2) I’m a full time student and between actual classes and doing classwork outside of school (I’m an art major, I have major projects going all the time) there just literally isn’t time. 3) The whole reason I went back to school is that after 10 years as a stay-home mom, nobody wanted to hire me to begin with. Not even the temp agencies. (After four months of job hunting I was finally able to find a full time job doing secretarial work for $11.50/hr at a company with about 14 employees and no benefits… I realized I wasn’t likely to do much better any time soon without a degree, plus a secretarial job was going to suck out my soul. So I went back to school to study graphic design.)
wets pencil No…Western…Dental. Got it. Thanks 
If you are a student couldn’t you get a student loan or if that would take to long get a loan from a bank or something to pay for the work that needs to be done.
My experience of dental insurance (through my employer) is that it is not really proper insurance at all. It covers you up to a pretty low limit ($1,000) and after that you pay everything yourself anyway. That is why they can cover you without worrying too much about pre-existing conditions.
$1,000 isn’t to be sneezed at, but two root canals and a crown are going to cost a lot more than that, I’m afraid.
You might want to check into it further. The students are closely supervised (I had a whole roomful of people in there during my extractions).
If you’re still too freaked after you get the lowdown from them, here’s a starting point: http://www.dentalplans.com/
Oh I know they are supervised… my boyfriend has all of his stuff done at a dental school. He had a 3 hour filling done by massively supervised students.
I think, given your circumstances, that you are being too picky.
I would, were I in your shoes, get the work done by the students/interns just so your teeth don’t get worse. When your financial situation improves, then you can find a more established (and expensive) dentist.
A lot of serious stuff can go wrong with a root canal. I think that genuine concern is not the same as “being too picky”.
Serendipity.
I found this thread completely by accident and it is EXACTLY what I was going to start a thread about but didn’t because… I don’t know why.
OpalCat– I am in a very similar situation to you. I need massive amounts of dental work done but I really can’t afford it. I am not working right now so I have no insurance and, of course, no money.
I wanted to start a thread asking about dental insurance. Because even though most dental insurance has a low limit that they will pay in one year (say $1000), it still seems too good to be true because they don’t seem to screen for pre-existing conditions. It seemed like free money to me. I calculated that the amount the insurance would pay minus the amount I would pay for premiums in a year plus the co-payments I would pay on the work I needed amounted to about a $300 savings for me. It seems to easy.
Anyway, as for the dental school–that’s where I get all my work done including crowns and so forth. It does take forever, but all that oversight and monitoring is why I trust the work to be done correctly. I too had terrible experiences with dentists in the past, particularly in my childhood. I resolve this problem by making sure they always administer nitrous oxide. However, this does add $25 to each visit, and there are more visits because everything takes so long.
What to do.
Well, I would have genuine concern about my teeth getting so bad that one or two could not be saved and had to be pulled, but that might be only because I’ve been there, done that. Doing nothing is worse than having a mediocre job done that can be fixed later. But, whatever, they’re your teeth. Good luck.
I’ve been there, done that, too. I have had several extractions. But I’m not suggesting that my alternative is to “do nothing”. My alternative is to pay a regular dentist “full price” via credit card, which I’d rather avoid if possible.
A few other benefits-related points about dental insurance. One factor behind the scenario you describe is that often you are restricted to a particular group of dentists. The dentists who belong to these plans generally do so because they bring in business. Maybe they are just starting out and building their practice, or maybe they don’t get a lot of positive word of mouth (hee hee) referrals. They also tend to be very backlogged in terms of scheduling appointments, especially for regular maintenance visits. Like, start 3 months in advance to schedule a six-month cleaning.
Another factor, if this is being offered through an employer, is that the employer is probably also paying some premiums, which are tax deductible to the employer. If this is not through an employer, see the first point above. Make sure the dentist you can see with the insurance is better than what’s on offer through the dental school.
So I’m looking at the dental plans at that link above, and they seem to be the “discount programs” not actual “insurance”. Do I need to know anything about those or are they pretty straightforward? I was looking at the ones that my current dentist accepts and they did seem to be a substantial discount…
As a fellow dental student I feel like I must throw in my 2 cents here…
There’s absolutely NO reason why you should be worried about a student doing your dental work. I can tell you from experience that the amount of supervision that we have, before can literally go near patient, is ENORMOUS. Not only that, if your case is deemed to be complicated you will be referred directly to a specialist (if your root canals happens to be on a back teeth, like a molar, for example). Also, the price of dental work at dental school are WAY cheaper then at private practices (almost 1/2 the price).
Georgia has only 1 dental school, at the Medical College of Georgia Dental School, which is located in Augusta.
Good luck and please don’t be afraid of the dentist!
By the way, a great way to avoid cavity is to properly brush and FLOSS FLOSS FLOSS!
Thanks for the lecture and the implied accusation about my dental habits. :rolleyes:
My tooth problems are not from lack of brushing. I had one filling in my mouth when I got pregnant at age 23. ONE. Unfortunately, I didn’t get enough calcium during my pregnancy and, according to my doctors, my body leeched it from my teeth. Following my pregnancy, my teeth literally crumbled apart. I had $11,000 worth of dental work in 4 months at one point, including several extractions, MANY root canals, and about 8 crowns. (Oh, and that is the guy who botched the extraction mentioned above).
Augusta? That’s 3 hours from me. That means a 6 hour round trip drive, plus however many hours they work on my teeth… and it would be many trips. Given that I’m a single parent and that I’m not from around here (I don’t have friends/family who could watch my son) I’m thinking the dental school thing isn’t an option for me while I live in Georgia. Now, I might be moving to Cleveland, OH this summer, and there is a dental school there (the one my boyfriend has work done at).
No I have used them, and as long as you are happy with the Dentists you get to pick from, they are fine.
This is probably the best way to go. With regular insurance, there’s usually a waiting period before you can have expensive work like crowns and root canals done - obviously the companies know that is why a lot of people want to sign up in the first place, so they make you pay a year or so of premiums before they subsidize those things. I just signed up for dental insurance here at my work place, and for the first year all they will pay for is a general exam. I have to wait a year before I can even get fillings subsidized under that plan. I imagine a year would be too long to wait for root canals and crowns.
Another option may be an interest-free loan. Depending on the dentist, sometimes you can get these. My dentist takes Care Credit, which will give you an interest-free loan of up to 18 months (if you qualify), and she also has a plan through Wells Fargo, which I’ve used before. With that one, I had a year to pay back what I owed.
I don’t qualify for the financing option. We tried that. You have to be employed, and they don’t consider my 10-hours-per-week student assistant position to be “a job”.