Yeah, $1200 a year is an absurd amount to pay for dental insurance, since, as others have already said, it typically maxes out at $1000 or $1500 per person per year, and typically only checkups and cleanings are "free". Getting a filling or other things will still require you to pay 20% or more, so add that to your $1200 you're paying. Save the money and pay out of pocket, and definitely check out each dentist's "dental plan"--they all have them, and they typically run a $200-$300 per person and cover the usual preventative care. Keep in mind though, they are still priced to make them money, and they do that by padding it with crappy extras, like flouride treatments or, God forbid, the whitening treatments.
My dental insurance through work costs under $50 A YEAR. So, it makes sense for me to have it. If I were to add my spouse, however, it is all of a sudden it is $600 a year...definitely not worth it to include her. So, we save that $550 which is more than enough to cover nearly all dental concerns we feel are likely to occur.
This will largely depend.
Mostly this is true.
However, I have my family on dental, and we pay $1000 a year in premiums.
My company has 3 tiers of dental
- the free one (few choices of dentists)
- the low cost one (20 choices)
- the premium plan (everyone)
We opted to pay out of pocket for several years. We had the "free" plan but my dentist wasn't on it, and neither was the pediatric dentist. We saved some money paying cash, but note that it's $200-250 per visit, x2 visits per year, x3 people = $1350 per year.
Then we did two things:
1. We both needed more dental work. We're in our 40s, some fillings started to go, needed crowns.
2. Had another kid.
So now we had 4 people, 2 visits per person per year.
AND on top of that - two crowns, a root canal, an implant.
The coverage isn't awesome in any one of those, but trust me, we get more than $1000 a year of coverage for the family.
Depending on the type of coverage and the size of your family, it *can* pay for itself. It just usually does not.