Dental Insurance. May become essential in light of recent NHS changes

It’s been in all the papers recently – NHS dentists are in a furore because of changes to the payment system, and a result, many are not signing up for a new NHS contract. It is not yet known how many dentists opted out, but the Daily Mail discovered that only a few days before the deadline, 7 out of 10 dentists had either not signed, or had signed on a temporary basis pending an appeal. If the appeals do not come to a satisfactory conclusion for the dentists, they could all give up on the NHS and go private in July, and there’s nothing the government can do to stop them. The problem stems from the fact that dentists do not feel that they were given enough time to consider the changes that the NHS has put through, and they also disagree with the changes themselves. The deadline came too quickly for many dentists to weigh up the pros and cons, and this is why so many are now only on a temporary contract with the NHS. The changes themselves are quite significant – instead of a lengthy list of separate charges amounting to about 400, the NHS has decided to have just three separate charges which encompass all the different types of work. This is how dental work will now be charged on the NHS:·A basic check-up will cost £15.50 ·A basic check-up plus fillings will cost £42.20. The charge will be the same whether it’s for one or more fillings. ·More complicated work such as a bridge or crown will be charged at a flat rate of £189.00. This charge will cover all the work needed at that time, even if a number of problems need to be addressed.Dentists are opposed to these new charges, specifically the charge relating to more serious work. They feel that patients will hang back and wait until they need more than one set of treatment so as to minimise the costs at the dentist, meanwhile any problems relating to tooth decay will worsen. “I’m concerned that many patients will wait until they need multiple treatments to try to get value for money”, said Dr Anthony Halperin from the Patients’ Association.At the moment it is looking like a significant number of NHS patients will have to go private instead. This will mean higher charges, and it will also mean having to sign up for a dentist again as a private patient. Dentists have noticeably been picking and choosing their patients more in recent years, looking to those who either have money to spare or who have insurance to cover all their dental costs. Now would be a good time to look into the options to help you get onto a private dentists list, and to help pay for future dental work.Dental insurance is one of the options. There are a number of dental insurance companies and also specialist brokers who deal with the companies and can often negotiate better rates. Start your research on the Internet as insurance is always cheaper on there. Search in Google for ‘dental insurance’ and you will see that there are plenty of companies vying for your business.We had a look at one policy with Western Provident which gives a general idea of the costs relating to dental insurance. For £12.49 a month for people aged 18-49 and £15.90 aged 50-69 you can have emergency dental treatment of up to £1,000, and the insurer will pay 25 of routine treatment, to a maximum of £250 a year. This type of insurance is better suited to emergency treatment, but is well worth it as it could save you a lot of money in the long run.The dentists would prefer you to be on a capitalisation scheme. They promote these schemes in the waiting room, and it involves you paying a monthly fee which covers all the work you need doing. If your teeth are in a state of disrepair then your monthly fee will be a lot higher than for an 18 year old with no problems. The dentist will give you a check-up and put you into a treatment category, your fees will be calculated based on that. With Denplan the monthly fee ranges from £9 and £30 a month – not something that’s going to break the bank. You could also consider the composite cash plan – this covers not only your teeth but a whole range of other health areas such as your eyes, the need for physiotherapy, any hospital treatment that may be needed and so on. We don’t think this is the best option as it can be very expensive, and the small print relating to when and how much you can claim can be extremely complicated.We advise people to start looking now at the costs related to private dentistry, and to check out dental insurance and capitalisation fees to see how much they’ll cost. Forewarned is forearmed as they say!

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