Common Types of Health Insurance with Dental Coverage
There are several common types of health insurance that can include dental coverage. It is also possible, if your plan does not include dental coverage, to purchase it separately.
Some Indemnity Health Policies will cover dental. These are policies where you have the most flexibility in doctors. You can choose any doctor you want, not just those within your network. While these are the most flexible of all the types of insurance they also tend to be the most expensive. In this plan you would be able to choose any dentist you wanted, provided they accepted your type of insurance.
Another type of health insurance that will possibly cover dental is an HMO. In an HMO you do choose a doctor but you can only choose within a certain group of doctors, usually referred to as a network. Once you have a primary doctor only they can approve you seeing a specialist. In this type of health plan, if it covered dental, your primary dentist would have to see you and refer you to an oral surgeon if that became necessary. These types of plans are typically cheaper than an Indemnity plan.
The third common type of health insurance that sometimes covers dental is a PPO. This is very similar to an HMO. In this type of plan you will choose your doctor from within a network. However, you will also be able to go outside of that network if you choose. The thing is though, you will be charged more than if you stayed in network. It offers a little bit of flexibility but not as much as an Indemnity plan typically does. This is the type of plan that is normally chosen when an employer offers an employee a choice between HMO and PPO.