<p>“If you like your employer plan, you can keep it.” :p</p>
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<p>Children who get dental care tend to be more likely to get dental care throughout their lives. Poor dental care can lead to huge problems with general health. Preventing bigger problems will usually save money for everyone.</p>
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<p>How does giving you pediatric dental care and maternity services that you will not use COST money? It costs nothing, because you won’t use those services.</p>
<p>Remember, under Obamacare the oldest subscribers can pay no more than three times as much as the youngest adult subscribers. We need to face the fact that under the ACA the premiums of YOUNG people are subsidizing the premiums of OLD people like us. Children may get cavities filled, and young women may have babies, but the real cost is 55-year-olds and 60-year-olds with expensive conditions that older people get. We’re the ones that have mammograms and colonoscopies and cancer and heart disease and hip replacements. We’re where the money goes.</p>
<p>Some of us with children who have no dental insurance use this thing called “CareCredit” to finance dental care for our children. It’s where you make payments to finance big issues should they occur. Cash for cavities cost our family less than dental insurance when we ran the numbers. This is not unusual and surely you can understand why this would annoy people who have a pile of bills for their own services and are now being told that everyone is entitled to veneers. Sigh!</p>
<p>Yes, I know I’m exaggerating.</p>
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Because:</p>
<p>1) Some people who “neither need nor want” these services will still wind up needing them. Not all children are planned, for example, but once they are born they still need pediatric dental care.</p>
<p>2) Those people who passed on said care and then need it often fall into the category I mentioned earlier: not having the insurance, and not having the cash to pay retail, they avoid the comparatively cheap and effective early care simply because it is still too expensive and seemingly still low risk. When the resulting emergency care is more than they can handle or pay, the now much higher costs get rolled into the fees everyone else pays.</p>
<p>3) Including this type of care from the start means that everyone is on the actuarial tables and is accounted for ahead of time. Incidentally, this means that cost of insurance should be an indicator of the cost to society… only now it is above board and paid early and without unneeded financial and health costs.</p>
<p>Let’s say a million people passed on pediatric dental care. If they really didn’t need it, then when the actuaries look at it, the additional cost of that care should be zero. To whatever extent they DID need it, then adding the insurance is saving some number from potentially immense costs down the road. And if the insurance cost is high, then it only goes to show that the people passing on this item were acting unwisely.</p>
<p>Not so incidentally, my youngest daughter has a potentially life-threatening health condition that is normally diagnosed when? You guessed it! During pediatric dental care! We were an exceptionally rare case where it was diagnosed at birth, and the doctors told us that pediatric dentists could catch it in the manageable stage but if they didn’t (or if there was no pediatric dental care) then it was usually fatal by the time non-dental symptoms appeared.</p>
<p>"This is not unusual and surely you can understand why this would annoy people who have a pli</p>
<p>Yearly dental checkups can be had for $25.00. It’s like car insurance covering an oil change. If people don’t do that it’s not an insurance issue.</p>
<p>No, it’s more like, you have no idea what is going to happen to your plan… and price is not guaranteed.</p>
<p>Somebody please tell me what percentage of employer plans have no caps? I’ve never even heard of that.</p>
<p>I’m just saying this because apparently there are people who are shocked about what is happening in the individual situation right now. They believed what they were told. (I did not, for what it’s worth.) I think people should realize what comes next.</p>
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<p>Who is telling you that? I’ve been Googling around to see what pediatric dental benefits are required. It turns out that the states decide what benefits are required, but if the state doesn’t provide guidance, regulators are instructed to look at what CHIP requires. Again, the CHIP requirements are by state, but in general:</p>
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<p><a href=“http://downloads.cms.gov/cmsgov/archived-downloads/SMDL/downloads/SHO100709.pdf[/url]”>http://downloads.cms.gov/cmsgov/archived-downloads/SMDL/downloads/SHO100709.pdf</a></p>
<p>I don’t know about you, but I don’t think veneers are services necessary to prevent disease, promote oral health, restore oral structures to health and function or treat emergency conditions. </p>
<p>So, a cite for veneers, please?</p>
<p>See post 3168.</p>
<p>Veneers was an admitted exaggeration to make a point.</p>
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Well if this is adding up to a significant cost then it appears that the actuaries do not agree with you! Bear in mind that you do not see all the risks nor the costs associated with them when you do your calculations, but they do.</p>
<p>You are making a gamble based on your actual circumstances, as you see them. From a system-wide perspective, those circumstances have to be accounted for before they are actually measured. You might be wrong, because you are looking at a single sample with an unknown level of measurement error. The actuaries are looking at a statistical breakdown of end results. I trust their education and data more than I trust your judgment.</p>
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I don’t think purely cosmetic issues are covered, but many ostensibly cosmetic procedures actually have long-term health benefits.</p>
<p>“No, it’s more like, you have no idea what is going to happen to your plan… and price is not guaranteed.”</p>
<p>Of course I do. My plan is ACA complaint and then some. All plans have already had to raise life time cap to 2M under ACA. 2014 is when they have to go to no cap. </p>
<p>My plan is already $20K/yr. More expensive than most ACA complaint plans being introduced now. The reason these group plans are so expensive is that they already cover everything. </p>
<p>I expect, just like for the past 20 something years, my share of the premium will increase, co-pay will increase, on a yearly basis - but my plan is not going to change as it is already ACA compliant.</p>
<p>It’s not unusual for children to have a mouth full of cavities before the parents pay any attention to it, and then the cost is not something they can deal with. Then there is the pain and distraction,not to mention the fact that there is mouthful of decay in the kids’ mouths. Unfortunately, I 've seen this. I’ve lived it too, as a little girl. So , yes, if kids have cavities they need to be filled and they should get their teeth checked. BUt it’s an exta expense for families that are struggling. I don’t see any problem in including this. </p>
<p>I wish basic dental care were covered for everyone. What to do when you are poor and a cavity progresses till it hits a nerve. Oh, the pain. Or impacted wisdom teeth. When you don’t have the money, it’s a tough go. </p>
<p>As someone who has paid for grandmas’ dentures, yes, I can tell you, that it is something that should be covered. Taking these old grannies eye/teeth when they have no money is a danged shame.</p>
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For some people, $25 IS an issue, and for others $100 for a filling or $1000 for a root canal or whatever is an issue. There are also people who are not perfect and sometimes make bad decisions (especially if they think they are doing well and don’t need that checkup!), and it is both easier AND cheaper to allow for a certain number of bad decisions than it is to let them run their course.</p>
<p>At least now they have some chance of fixing that stupid website. Unfortunately, these guys are just helping out instead of taking over the whole thing which would be better.</p>
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<p>[Google</a>, Oracle Workers Enlisted for Obamacare ‘Tech Surge’ - Businessweek](<a href=“Businessweek - Bloomberg”>Businessweek - Bloomberg)</p>
<p>More small businesses planning on offering health care benefits:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2013/10/31/business/31reuters-usa-healthcare-smallbusiness.html?hp[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2013/10/31/business/31reuters-usa-healthcare-smallbusiness.html?hp</a></p>
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Several of the federal employee high option dental plans do cover implants. There are limitations and they have to be medically necessary, but they are covered.</p>
<p>Patsmom, I didn’t know that - but somehow I don’t think to be ACA compliant that most plans, especially ones on the exchange, are going to be covering those things.</p>
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<p>Uh, no. It was a major selling point, but not a point in actuarial science. :)</p>
<p>There are cost controls built into ACA. Preventative care isn’t one of them, though. It doesn’t turn out to control costs. We can wish it would, but if you look at results, it doesn’t. </p>
<p>But if you assign a cost to pain and suffering, then preventative care does control costs.</p>