dental insurance principles

[roger]

Hi, all. I was just reviewing my benefits and thought of some questions that I hadn't thought of before about the way dental insurance works. If anyone works in this line or has any insight, please jump in.

- Was dental always separate from health? I guess you could say the same about vision. Why?

- Is the goal of dental just supposed to be about sharing the cost with the insurance company, which has the strength to negotiate price with providers? While the worst dental problems won't cost anything approaching that of bypass surgery, and while we need our hearts more than we need teeth, the costs of unanticipated dental work can be rather prohibitive for a working- or middle-class family. It seems that the typical employer-sponsored plan only covers half of the most expensive procedures, subject to limits that probably haven't increased in at least a decade.

- I can understand the incentives involved in covering most or all the basic and preventative work, but as in anything else involving the body, there are some things that are influenced by the genetic hand we're dealt and age, so I can see the need for more risk-spreading, too.


If anyone has some information on why the benefits in this line are typically structured the way I think they are, I'd be interesting in learning.