Are you looking for a way to save money on dental care? If so, you may have considered skipping your six-month checkups. After all, your mouth feels fine, so there’s no need to visit, right? Wrong. In fact, if you want to make dental care more affordable, you need to take a preventive approach – especially if you have dental insurance. Routine checkups are the best way to prevent gum disease, which can be expensive to treat. Read on to learn how using your dental insurance benefits can help you avoid gum disease, save money, and enjoy a healthier smile!
How Dental Insurance Helps You Save Money
While medical insurance is designed to help you afford treatments once health problems arise, dental insurance is primarily about preventing issues in the first place. Most dental insurance providers encourage this by fully covering the cost of two checkups and cleanings per year. The reason why is simple: paying for preventive care now will reduce the risk of minor oral health issues worsening and requiring more complex (and expensive) procedures later on.
How to Prevent Gum Disease with Regular Checkups
The six-month checkups and cleanings that your insurance pays for present the perfect opportunity for your dentist to look for warning signs of gum disease. In its early stages, gum disease is often so mild that it doesn’t result in any noticeable symptoms at all. Left undetected and untreated, though, it could progress to the point where your teeth loosen and even fall out!
Regular checkups give your dentist a chance to examine your mouth and catch the infection before it causes any lasting damage to your smile. Professional teeth cleanings can also remove built-up plaque that is often to blame for gum disease (and cavities). Essentially, the sooner gum disease is caught, the better.
Making the Most of Your Dental Insurance Benefits
Since your insurance likely covers two preventive appointments a year, it’s a good idea to take full advantage of that. They allow your dentist to either stop gum disease in its tracks or administer conservative treatments. Either way, you’ll be avoiding the need for procedures like scaling and root planing, which is typically only eligible for partial insurance coverage.
If you haven’t scheduled your second dental checkup this year, now would be the perfect time to do so. By this point, chances are that you’ve already met your deductible, but you still have some coverage left on your annual maximum. Most Americans with dental insurance don’t use all of their annual maximum benefits, so when their insurance plans reset at the beginning of a new year, they lose coverage they could have spent on care their smiles need. Avoid wasting money by booking a dental appointment before the year ends; it will benefit your wallet just as much as it does your smile!
About the Author
Dr. Dhavalkumar Rana has spent almost a decade as a trusted dentist in Mesquite, TX after earning his Doctor of Dental Surgery degree from the prestigious New York University. He provides minimally invasive gum disease therapy, but he would of course prefer to help patients avoid it if at all possible! He’s in-network with many dental insurance providers, including Cigna, Delta Dental, Humana, and MetLife. To learn more about how to avoid gum disease and save on dental care, contact TrueCare Dentistry at 469-399-7288.