Dental insurance?

[flutterworc]

Man alive - our local NHS dentist is terrible and there is a good private one near, so am wading into the minefield that is private dental insurance. How can it be so complicated?!

I presumed that it would be like medical insurance where they look at your profile, you pay monthly and everything is covered bar existing conditions so long as you pay an excess. Am I woefully naive? What is it I actually need for me, DH & DS (4)?

I would stay with NHS

Thanks. But we’re in an area where NHS dentists are horribly overstretched and the ones that do have space have notoriously poor service - our last one continually cancelled our appointments, carried out unnecessary procedures and failed to identify issues that then got worse. So we’re going private rather than continue with such poor service.

Ds won't need it,will he?

I can understand wanting to go privately.

DS wouldn’t need it specifically but if we do a family policy he may as well be covered I was thinking, but maybe not? My logic was (god forbid) if he needed a filling, it would be amalgam on NHS whereas white on private. Secondly, I’d like his teeth coated which I suspect wouldn’t be on the NHS either?

My friend who has private insurance takes her kids too but they're seen for free as they are children.

Coating is on the NHS ,my ds has had it done.

I've had white fillings on the NHS,plus you can just pay the NHS dentist extra to have white .

That’s good to know. So know just to wade through the minefield of adult dental insurance!

We have dental cover as an addition to our private health insurance. It covers for X amount each year towards regular checkups and hygienist then a separate amount each year towards any work needing to be done.

I’m not sure how much it would be by itself but private dental is a different world to NHS. I used to go to an NHS dentist and In my experience they didn’t have a hygienist they would just tag on a quick scale and polish to your dental exam.

But a proper hygienist visit takes 30-45 mins when at a private dentist.

But a proper hygienist visit takes 30-45 mins when at a private dentist

Sorry to be contrary but last time I went to a private one ,I was in and out within 8 mins!

I have mixed feelings about private dentistry, fortunately the NHS one I have now is great and I choose to go there rather than the private one we were seeing with our health insurance.

Good luck OP with finding a good plan, you're right it is a minefield.

Choose which dentist you want to go to , recommendations are best , and then call them and see what they recommend. Our dentist runs his own scheme , others prefer to use a particular one . We've been private for years , real shortage of NHS where I am .

Dp and I have Denplan and DS is treated as an NHS patient at the same private dental surgery. We pay £36 a month for both of us and this covers all check ups and hygienist appointments, all fillings, and any other work except lab fees. We both had an initial appointment with the dentist and hygienist and the price is based on the standard of our teeth.
I have had problems with NHS dentists trying to do unnecessary work previously so I would not go back to one unless we really could not afford it.

We had private dental cover for years. Found the dentist to be very expensive and the cover seemed to always go up on price and cover less and less and unless you had a reasonable incident each year you’d get nowhere near what you paid.

So now all gone NHS and use the money for cover to pay for extra hygienist appointments and save for if we ever need big treatment. Very happy so far.