Given how expensive dental treatments are, it pays to choose your extras cover wisely. Here are a few tips to help you save on dental extras:
1. Find out exactly what you are covered for: Consumers Health Forum chief Dr Elizabeth Deveny says if you have particular health needs or issues, you should first speak with your potential provider to see if your needs will be covered sufficiently.
“People need to make sure that they understand their health insurance policy and what is and isn’t covered at the time they sign up. You don’t want to see people paying essentially for junk policies.”
2. Compare policies: Experts encourage people considering their private health insurance options to shop around and use the government’s comparison site—privatehealth.gov.au or even other comparison websites, where consumers can compare policies and find policies that match their needs.
3. Look for combined limits: Some insurers combine all or some categories of dental treatments under a single limit. For example, routine dental, major dental, endodontic and orthodontic may all have a single limit of $1200 a year. This can be useful, because you might not need root canal treatment every year, so the entire limit can be used towards general and major subcategories, while still giving you the option of using it on endodontic treatment when needed.
4. Weigh the out-of-pocket expenses: CHF recommends that when considering a policy people should look for any exclusions as well as the annual and lifetime caps on benefits.
Health funds generally advertise the headline limits on what you can spend on a particular service, such as $500 on dental a year. But they don’t usually advertise their individual item limits. For instance, you may be able to claim $50 per visit to the dentist, which means you’d have to go 10 times a year to claim the full amount, while also leaving you to cover the gap.
5. Find out about preferred providers: Look on the insurers website to find out about preferred providers in their region as this can give higher or additional benefits. Also check if your provider has agreements with dentists in your area who provide service for a capped or no fee.
