I’m sure there’s some historical reason for this. Why aren’t teeth and gums and dental prostheses covered by most (all?) health insurance? Even VA health benefits only cover dental work for service related injuries, even when the recipient qualifies for non-service related healthcare otherwise. What gives?
My dental WAS covered my medical at one time. Up until 1994, root canal, gum surgery, teeth capping for decay was all covered by my medical plans. I had Human, Blue Cross (Illinois) and Mass Mutual. They all covered dental.
After 1994 was the last time my medical insurance covered dental. I think it’s 'cause dental is too common. By age 40 over 90% of American have gum disease that needs treatment. At $1,500 for a root canal it’s too expensive. Even a lot of dental insurance is capped at $1,000 a year for that reason.
Since a lot of dental procedures were at one time covered by medical insurance, I see no reason other than to save money, why it stopped being covered
Never figured it out. Bad teeth and gum disease can contribute to all manner of other health problems, including heart troubles. As a retired military guy, I have to pay extra for dental coverage. I only worked for one place that covered all medical, dental, physical therapy, chiropractors, you name it. And it was for the whole family, not just the employee. Very generous, that.
This part has gotten controversial. This needs a thread of it’s own.
If dental were covered, health insurance would just cost more. Many people have minimial dental costs through most of their lives, and the conditions where catastrophic dental care would necessary are usually covered by health insurance. I believe dentists were not eager to conform to the requirements of health insurance either, since they operate in the mode of selling cosmetic services to their patients.
Despite that, my health insurance covers chiropracty and massage therapy. Go figure.
We have done this thread a few times before. The situation is a little odd but it isn’t just that way in the U.S. Even countries with ‘free health care’ usually exclude all or parts of important dental work as well. I think it is mostly caused by the fact that regular medicine and dentistry developed as parallel health fields but were not completely in sync. That heritage still exists today even though many dentists perform true surgery on one of the most important areas of your body (overlapping with some types of other doctors), go through lots of medical training, and can write prescriptions. Dentistry has advanced enough where it probably would be wise to combine it more with regular medicine if we started from scratch but the inertia of the legacy systems is hard to overcome.
Related question: If I got kicked in the face by a horse tomorrow and needed my jaws and teeth put back in place, where would medical insurance stop and out of pocket (or dental insurance if I had it) begin? Would anything done by a dentist or oral surgeon be covered? I know that you don’t speak for my insurance company, I’m just wondering about general trends.
BTW, there was a prominent case in MD a few years ago in which a kid DIED because he didn’t get dental care and his tooth abscess spread infection to his brain.
You have to understand that the reason why there is health insurance is not primarily to help people with medical bills, but rather to keep a steady income stream to hospitals. Hospitals went through slack periods when they had empty beds, so they formed Blue Cross as a way to keep the income steady: you’d sign up, pay a monthly amount less than a hospital stay, and the hospital would have a steady source on income.
Because of this, Blue Cross (which was the only game for hospital insurance into the 60s or so) made its decisions about covered based upon services the hospital could provide. Since hospitals didn’t do dental work, it wasn’t covered.
Next came Blue Shield, which did the same things for doctors bills. In the beginning, you’d join Blue Shield and have your doctor’s visits paid for. Again, since doctors weren’t dentists, there was no need to cover it.
Back in the 50s, most people had both Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
Eventually, dental insurance was added under the Blue Shield label. But since doctor insurance was already established, it was kept separate from the plan.
Things evolved and morphed from there. Blue Cross and Blue Shield merged (often in name, but always in function – Blue Shield would cover hospital stays and Blue Cross would cover doctor’s visits). Other companies got into the business. But they kept their model on the separation between doctor and dentist (though medical procedures involving teeth are often covered for injuries and things other than cavities, fillings, braces, etc.).
Which is exactly what prompted the question, actually. My SO has a cardiac history (MI, atrial fibrillation) and truly horrendous teeth with permanently infected gingiva. Not to mention that his diet absolutely sucks because he can’t chew well. I’m terrified he’s going to end up with some nasties on a valve, if they aren’t there already. But the VA won’t treat it. They’ll treat the heart stuff, do ECGs and echos and a cardiac cath and all that other stuff, but won’t even look at his mouth. 
Ah, now this was exactly the sort of “how did we get here” that I suspected was out there but I just didn’t know. Thanks, that makes sense! Sucks, but makes sense.