Dental Insurance Articles
How Proper Dental Hygiene Can Lower Costly Monthly Premiums
2010-10-20
Dental hygiene is the key to lowering dental care costs and, surprisingly, the cost of dental premiums. Lower premiums can make not only make your wallet thicker, but can also make an individual more attractive to other insurance companies. Potentially, this could result in the individual being offered medical or vision insurance at even cheaper premium rates.
What constitutes proper dental hygiene differs for every individual. Tooth size, previous tooth care, whether the individual has undergone any prior dental procedures and the number of times teeth are professionally cleaned can impact tooth health. If an individual has taken care of his or her teeth, the amount of dental care needed other than cleaning and filling the occasional cavity will be quite small.
The first impact proper dental hygiene can have on premium amounts is in the reduction of times an individual will need to visit the dentist. The less an individual visits the dentist, and the less he or she requires extensive procedures that could have been prevented through proper dental hygiene, the more likely it is that he or she will be able to obtain lower premiums. Insurance companies are a business; as a business, their focus is on saving money. A customer that pays a monthly premium but rarely ever requires the insurance company to make payments on his behalf may receive a better premium than an individual that requires constant, expensive dental care.
However, this does not mean that an individual with dental insurance need never visit the dentist. Proper dental hygiene includes visits to a dental office for routine dental care, such as check-ups, cleanings and X-rays of a patient's mouth. These three measures are acceptable and, many times, desirable expenses for an insurance company because their costs lower the likelihood of a patient needing more serious dental care. This fact is demonstrated best by the insurance company's interview of a potential new customer. In these interviews, it is not unusual for the company to inquire into how many times the customer visits a dentist and the purpose of those visits. The less significant the visit, meaning the smaller the procedure occurring during these dental visits, the more likely it is that the customer will be quoted lower premiums.
Proper dental hygiene can also reduce premiums because it may mean that an individual does not need extensive dental coverage. A track record of seeing a dentist only for routine care may permit the individual to purchase a smaller dental care package that will automatically have a lower premium. In this situation, the cost of premiums will be entirely determined by the customer and not the insurance company.