Taking care of your teeth is important for everyone, but not every employer offers dental insurance, even though it can often be bundled with your individual health insurance plan.
Approximately 75% of Americans have dental insurance, and most of them get it through their employer – usually bundled together with a group health insurance plan.
If you are a business owner, know that whether you cover all of your employees’ dental coverage, part of it, or allow them to buy into the group at a reduced rate, offering dental insurance can be an excellent employee benefit that appeals to the best talent in your industry, reduces employee turnover, and improves your company’s overall retention rate.
What is Dental Insurance and Why Do You Need It?
Dental insurance is similar to health insurance, but it is focused on only care for your mouth and teeth.
Dental insurance policies typically cover some or all of the cost of preventative dental care such as teeth cleanings as well as fillings, crowns, root canals, and oral surgery like tooth extractions.
Depending on your dental insurance policy, things like orthodontics (braces, retainers, and similar items, and their associated care), periodontics (care for the structures that support and surround the teeth, like gum scaling and root planing, flap surgery, and similar procedures), and prosthodontics (dentures, bridges, dental implants, and other replacements or fixes for damaged or missing teeth) can have some type of coverage.
If you are a business owner determining what type of dental insurance package or packages to offer your employees, then you should look at all the options that are available – often your group health plan provider can bundle dental and vision insurance options together with your overall insurance policy package.
Why Do You Need to Carry or Offer Dental Insurance?
Dental insurance covers part or all the costs of dental care for you and your family or spouse.
If you do not have dental insurance, you’ll have to pay out of pocket for dental work – which can get extremely expensive, especially if you have complicated issues with your teeth.
Having dental insurance and therefore inexpensive or free dental care can not only save you money, it can help keep you healthier all around.
Having a healthy set of teeth is important not only for your comfort and appearance, but many conditions like diabetes, respiratory diseases, osteoporosis, and cardiovascular disease have a direct connection to your oral or dental health.
As a business owner or benefits administrator (or both in the case of a small business), offering dental insurance can help attract and retain the best and brightest talent in your industry.
How Do You Choose the Right Type of Dental Insurance?
If you are choosing a dental insurance package, whether it is through your employer or an individual plan, you should consider your needs.
Dental insurance may or may not cover things like dental implants, porcelain crowns, dentures, or other prosthodontics as well, so if those are things you need or things that you think you may need, you should ensure that the dental insurance plan that you choose covers or subsidizes these procedures.
How Much Does Dental Insurance Cost?
The cost of dental insurance varies widely, and in some cases, your employer may pick up all or part of the cost.
What’s more, if you have a group dental plan, the risk is spread out over the entire company or organization, so the overall premiums – and therefore your costs as well as your employer’s costs – are lower per policyholder.
What Other Types of Insurance Are Related to Dental Insurance?
Group health insurance and individual health insurance are both related to dental insurance; dental insurance is often bundled with vision or considered an additional supplement in both group health care plans and individual health care plans.
Whether you are an employer or an individual, talk directly to an ASCO Insurance agent about dental insurance.
