Discounted Dental Plans| What are Discounted Dental Plans

Discounted dental plans are simply plans offered by companies as a service to enable their customers to receive additional savings when using services detailed in the plan coverage.

Discounted dental plans can be described in a way that is comparable to the store membership cards. For example the grocery chain Kroger has a shopper’s reward card. If you use your “Kroger’s” card and buy the items that are on sale, you can get additional savings when you purchase those items. Discounted dental plans are basically the same. When you are enrolled into a discount dental plan, and you visit a dentist that accepts the plan, you will get additional discounts on the services you receive.

Need an example? No problem, let’s say you visit your regular dentist for a basic check up and cleaning. In my part of the country the average cost of a check up for an established patient is $70 and the average cost of a cleaning is $117. So with no coverage at all the cost will be $187, now if you have insurance, your cost will be based on how much of your deductible for dental care you have used for the year, which could range from 50% up to 100% if you have used all your yearly coverage. With discounted dental plans you will save anywhere from 58% up to 80% discounts on your dental care. In this case I will save 80% on the check up and 60% on the cleaning, making my total for today $61. Not bad since, my monthly cost for the plan is only $19.95, which includes my wife and two children. Dental insurance usually averages $60 per month for a single person and on up for a spouse and children.

So it is easy to see how these discounted dental plans can easily save hundreds to thousands of dollars each year. Now there is something else about these plans that are pretty cool. Let’s say you want dental insurance, but find that these discounted dental plans can benefit you too. You can use both when you go to the dentist. How about another example? When my daughter needed dental work, the dentist quoted me $1750, for everything. My insurance would cover $750, for the year. Which would have left me with $1050 to pay out of pocket. The cool thing is the dentist was accepting the discounted dental plans, so they took 75% off the $1750, leaving $437.50, then submitted it to insurance which covered the rest of the cost, and left me with $312.50, left that my insurance would cover for the rest of the year. That was pretty cool, and definitely worth the 20 bucks a month. So these discounted dental plans help in stretching your insurance coverage for the year too.

One last thing about these discounted dental plans, is that they cover every procedure a dentist is licensed to do. This even included cosmetic procedures like teeth whitening and adult braces. Most insurance companies I have seen will not even give you a discount on these procedures. So I hope this clears a few things up about discounted dental plans, and helps you understand how they can further help you by saving you a lot of money of the years.