I have once again found myself in a situation without medical insurance coverage. Fortunately for Canadians really only means that I am without dental ((and optical and some prescription drugs)) coverage. For whatever reason, our utopian government funded health system does not cover dentistry.
So I once again started the futile process of searching for decent dental insurance plans and have once again come up empty handed (( To be honest, I didn’t look that hard. Most of the providers do not readily offer rates or quotes online. I can’t be bothered to call anyone, it’s 2016!)).
There are two main problems with the state of dental insurance. First, you can’t just get dental insurance, all of the providers want to bundle in other coverage, like accidental death & dismemberment, ambulance coverage, etc. While I’m sure having those types of insurance might not be a bad idea, bundling them limits my choice as a consumer and certainly affects the monthly price.
Which leads me to my second point, the price is insane! The lowest price I could find for my family of 4 was in the neighbourhood of $350/month ((Remember, this includes a bundles of services I just don’t care about)) or $4200/year. Even if the insurance covered 100% of the dental bill, I would be hard-pressed to spend that much money on dentistry in one year! It’s totally insane.
I would much rather pay my dentist $100 – $200 per month to cover 100% of my family’s dental needs, than pay an insurance company some enormous amount of money to maybe possibly cover 60% of some procedures, but only on the third Tuesday during a full moon.
With traditional-post-WWII-American-dream style careers few and far between, it’s time for insurance providers to modernize.
Or better yet, add dental to our provincial health care coverage.