Dental insurance and you...

If you buy dental insurance on your own, you are guaranteed to get less
benefits than your premium. In such a case, the carrier cannot spread their
risk out over a few thousand people. They can only spread the risk over the
number of people in your family. Carriers know that people ONLY buy dental
insurance on their own when they have lots of dental work needing to be
done.

So, they make sure they make their profit by limiting benefits.
Discount plans (like Ameriplan), only sell you a list of offices which (at
one time) offered to give discounts to people enrolled in the discount plan.
Usually, the offices are still listed by the plan after the office stops
participating. The plan will also list the same dentist and the same office
5-10 times on their list, so that the list of providers looks to be very
long. In reality, there is usually only 2-4 offices within a 40 mile radius
who will participate with the discount plans, and these are often not the
offices with outstanding reputations. Rural areas will often have much
fewer offices willing to participate.


You could discuss the merits of getting medical and dental care in poorer
countries. Some of the care in those locations is outstanding. However, I
have yet to hear of a US citizen being impressed with the hospitals in
Mexico. Maybe that is because most of the ones I hear about are in resort
areas, but one would think that those areas would have the funds to develop
good facilities. Since you are choosing to get your care in the USA, that
you do not have enough confidence in the Mexican system to get your care
there?