Financial Insurance

Fact 1 – NO INSURANCE PAYS 100% OF ALL PROCEDURES

Dental Insurance is meant to be a way of reducing your out of pocket costs. Many patients think that their insurance pays 90%-100% of all dental fees. This is not the case. Most plans only pay between 50%-80% of the average total fee. Some pay more, some pay less. Each plan is uniquely designed for each employer.

Fact 2 – BENEFITS ARE NOT DETERMINED BY OUR OFFICE

You may have noticed that sometimes your dental insurer reimburses you or the dentist at a lower rate than the dentist’s actual fee. Frequently, insurance companies state that the reimbursement was reduced because your dentist’s fee has exceeded the usual, customary or reasonable fee (“UCR”) used by the company.

A statement such as this gives the impression that any fee greater than the amount paid by the insurance company is unreasonable or well above what most dentists in the area charge for a certain service. This can be very misleading and simply is not accurate.

Insurance companies set their own schedules and each company uses a different set of fees they consider allowable. These allowable fees may vary widely because each company collects fee information from claims it processes. The insurance company then takes this data and arbitrarily chooses a level they call the “allowable” UCR Fee. Frequently this data can be three to five years old and these “allowable” fees are set by the insurance company so they can make a net 20%-30% profit.