October 1, 2013

Don’t Let Your Dental Benefits Get Away

That Money is YOURS – But Only Until Dec. 31, 2013

If you’re fortunate enough to have dental insurance, you got it one of two ways. Either you paid for it out of your own pocket (OUCH!) or you received it from your employer.

That money is yours – for the moment...

But it comes with one sneaky little secret your insurance company hopes you’ll forget. If you don’t use it by the end of the year, it disappears right into their pockets.

That probably sounds like some sort of scam, but it’s all perfectly legal. In fact, if you look at the plan information your employer or insurance company gave you you’ll see it all spelled out in paragraph after paragraph of fine print.

But chances are that was months or even years ago. And even if you read it, it’s easy to forget. That’s why I’m taking this opportunity to remind you that dental insurance isn’t like the other kinds of insurance you buy, and encourage you to make the most of it now.

The Big Difference

You see, unlike car or medical insurance, dental insurance isn’t meant to protect you from huge unexpected expenses like a major illness or a serious accident.

Instead, dental insurance provides an unfortunately small maximum yearly amount to cover routine preventive care like checkups, cleanings, simple cavity treatment and partial coverage for more expensive procedures.

So while you hope you won’t ever need your auto insurance, your dental insurance is meant to be used right down to the last dime every single year. And, if it’s not, anything that’s left when the year ends, goes right to the insurance company’s bottom line -- There’s no way you can get at it.

You Can Keep it All

Fortunately you can keep that from happening – and enjoy some extra benefits as well.

Using your dental insurance carefully can help you save real money on the preventive care you need. And it can do something more. Because, by taking good care of your teeth on a regular basis you may be able to actually avoid more serious (and more expensive) problems in the future.

But you can only enjoy those advantages if you act now.

You see, more and more people are planning to use up their dental benefits now, while there’s still time.

In fact my staff tells me that requests for appointments are WAY up, thanks to folks realizing their benefits aren’t going to last forever. And over the next few weeks it’s going to get harder and harder to schedule appointments before Dec. 31.

Plan Smart, Act Now

If you’re determined to hang on to ALL your benefits, it’s time for us to get together and make a plan to put them to work.

For example, if you still have benefits left this year, we can plan perform needed treatment now, before annual benefits expire

Or, if you’ve used most of this year’s benefits, we can plan to do some care now, to take advantage of whatever benefits you have left, and do the rest of the work once the next benefit year begins.

If that makes sense just give us a call. But, please don’t wait.

Every year so many people want to schedule appointments before the end of the year we end up having to turn some folks down – and I’d hate to have that happen to you.