If you did not catch Part 1 of this column last week, you can read it at www.towncommonmedia.com.

As I explained last week, dental insurance is not really insurance. All plans available are dental benefit plans, intended to cover basic services. True insurance covers loss and damage. Dental insurance was set up like this in the 1970’s and has not changed. While premiums have increased, the percentage paid out by these companies has decreased significantly. Ballot Question 2 does not change the general structure of dental plans, unfortunately, but takes aim at the amount of money companies collect vs. the amount they pay out for direct patient care.

Taken directly from the Mass.gov website:

“This… (Read More)

As a general rule, the team at my office is discouraged from using the word “insurance”, because dental insurance is not really insurance. They are dental benefits. True insurance covers loss and damage.

I offer medical insurance to my team as all small businesses do in Massachusetts. A family plan in my office costs $2600 per month. A single person is $900 per month. That includes a $2000 deductible per person as well. Said a different way, $33,200 or $12,800 respectively, is paid out by the patient before the insurance company pays towards anything. When I was growing up, this was called catastrophic insurance; you weren’t covered for the minor stuff, but if you needed… (Read More)

If you have read these columns in the past, you have seen me write about periodontal (gum) health and its relationship to systemic health. There is a slew of scientific evidence that poor periodontal health is not good for you systemically. It has been linked to heart disease, stroke, low birth weight babies, diabetes and more.

Gum tissue health is an easy thing for patients to be lax about, or even ignore. Why? The main reason is that gum problems do not hurt, unless they are so severe that tooth loss is inevitable. It is the chronic inflammation in the gum tissue, regardless of whether it hurts or not, that has the potential to affect… (Read More)