OT: Dental Insurance for Self_Employed??

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Yes, but they don't cover the procedure you had :-) Mike

Are you complaining about health care in America ???

don

Next time fly to Australia for the treatment. Even including the airfare, you'll probably come out ahead.

Sylvia.

Jim, I had a plan with Delta Dental (I think it was) a few years back when I lived in Phx. The problem I'm finding with many plans is the yearly max is 1000 to 1500 bucks.

When I had coverage (through a previous employer), the big stuff was only covered 50%. There may also have been a $ limit. I never had big stuff when I had coverage...

I understand that a lot of folks in your area end up driving south for dental care, and some from further away fly south for dental care (and still come out ahead) - there are evidently clinics catering to gringos set up in several of the border towns, including things like rapid crown fabrication so you don't have to do the month-long wait between blowing out the bottom of the tooth and getting a permanent replacement up top. Obviously this would require a bit of due diligence and some element of needing to trust...of course you have the same thing on this side of the border, really.

Right. Whenever somebody asks for a recommendation for an op amp, he's complaining about the fact that our government doesn't tell us which one to use.

Figures :-(

...Jim Thompson

Me? Someone already with a frisk-at-every-portal rating... I kid you not, I'm on the list :-)

...Jim Thompson

I think dental insurance is kinda silly myself. I think we should all be responsible for the minor medical costs and have insurance to cover the major expenses. I am in the process of moving up to $10,000 dollar deductable and use a Health Savings Account. The difference in cost between my $2500 deductable and my $10,000 deductable is about $6,000 per year. I can put $5,850 into the HSA and use that for medical expenses (including dental). I wish I would have done this when the HSA first became available. Mike

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Before I went "on the dole", I was up to $880/month for $5000 deductible, major medical _only_ :-(

I did an Excel spreadsheet on rates/benefits/deductibles and found (for my case) that $5K deductible was optimum cash flow.

Now, with Medicare, and a Mutual of Omaha supplemental ($315/month), I get 100% medical coverage... but no dental.

...Jim Thompson

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

When I was looking for dental coverage, I discovered that most (all?) plans have a one year vesting period for major procedures. That is, they want a year's worth of dues before they'll do anything big.

Even though it was relatively inexpensive ($50/month), I decided to not get dental coverage. I haven't regretted it, yet.

Bob

Hah, and you defend the USA's health care.

Graham

A MONTH to make a crown ? !!!!!

Graham

due to the hugely increased level of spam please make the obvious adjustment to my email address

Not really. They don't appear to work like medical plans, available with high deductibles but covering major procedures. I think they want you to go in for periodic maintenance and cleaning so as to prevent big problems later. So they cover that stuff as a part of the plan, but charge you for it.

Perhaps the best place to shop is with your medical insurance provider. As an add-on, it might be cheaper than a stand-alone plan.

Next, look at group plans sold through professional organizations. But be careful here. Some group plans are actually much more expensive than individual plans. When I left Boeing, I compared their COBRA medical plan with an identical private plan. A private plan was much cheaper, since being a part of a geriatric group doesn't get me lower premiums.

I do the periodic thing. What happened here is I thought I had sinusitis, pain responded to antibiotics, then, as Joerg would say, Kablammo !-)

I had cracked a crown, decayed underneath, got to root :-(

Result, root canal + new crown... ~$2500 :-(

I think I'll inquire of Mutual of Omaha... I'm just shy of my 70th birthday and I'm starting to enter high-maintenance mode :-(

I qualify for geriatric ;-)

...Jim Thompson

I thought this was an old post so I went to Google. I go to Google and select groups and nothing shows. You go to "web" and the Usenet sci.electronics.design shows up. How screwed up is that. They have started to include any forum which makes the good feature of searching on Usenet unless.

Like I said, a cheap dental plan, and one the works immediately saved about half of my sister bill which would have been about $10K for $5K. $5K savings for about $135 a year.

On top of that, I had to return here to post since IT will not post to binaries.

greg

Sounds like the bean counters should be fired! Mike

Most plans are capped at lowish yearly totals, like $1500/person or so. Then wait times, miniscule reimbursements, IOW not worth it IMHO.

Come to El Dorado County in Kahleefohniah and have it done for 60-70%. Or better, fly to Asuncion (Paraguay) and have it done for Perhaps the best place to shop is with your medical insurance provider. As

Look at the fine print. Dental insurance usually looks a whole lot less attractive after reading the fine print.

Then the health "care" guys will want big bux.

Hey, did you ever manage to freeze up SPICE in mid air? I did, twice, ran to 9.5% over 3-4 minutes and then it froze stiff. No error message, nada, it just sat there with the CPU fan blowing hard. Had a coffee with my wife, came back, still 9.5% and CPU fan running full bore. Strange.

I know. I was just blowing off steam. Also need to repair the roof :-(

Which "Spice", the toy brand ?:-)

About all that happens to me anymore is when I'm not paying attention to deleting old .DAT files and I fill up the hard-drive. That stops everything dead in its tracks :-(

...Jim Thompson