Dental Plans for Diabetics

Whether you are aware of it or not, there is a relationship between your dental health and glycemic control. In other words, if you are a diabetic, there are additional reasons to make sure you see a dentist.

You will also hear these same sentiments echoed by cardiologists to their heart patients.

If you have poor dental health, your ability to heal and deal with infections is compromised. You need to take care of your teeth. We have a number of inexpensive dental plans to help you to do so.

The plans fall into four major groups:

- Dental PPO plans
- Dental HMO plans (DHMO)
- Indemnity Dental Plans
- Discount Dental Plans

These plans are available on an individual basis or for a group of two or more employees.

I am going to give you an overview of each of these plans. However, if you would like a more in-depth review, pricing, network lookup and so on, I strongly recommend you visit the following website by clicking on this link: Dental Insurance

I have also included direct links for plans in each of the overviews. These links will take you to specific pages that describe the plans in greater detail.

PPO Dental Plans

A PPO dental insurance plan is the most frequently asked for. Generally, most dentists will tell you that this is the only plan they take. Of course, this is not true and there are literally tens of thousands of good dentists that accept other style of plans.

With a PPO dental plan you have a network of dentists that have agreed on a fixed, pre-determined price for every (almost every) dental procedure. If the dentist is part of the network, they can only charge you this special discounted rate.

The plan will pay a percentage of this rate depending on the type of procedure.

For example, if you have a cleaning, it might be covered 100%. A filling might be covered at an 80% rate, meaning you will pay 20% of the discounted rate. A crown or root canal might have 50% coverage.

There are often waiting periods for more extensive (read expensive) procedures.

Dental HMO (DHMO) Plans

Dental HMO plans usually cover basic procedures such as a cleaning or simple filling for a co-pay. Everything else is usually discounted.

Keep in mind that dental HMO plans are not available in all states and the networks are much smaller than the PPO plans. We have not had too much luck finding the most popular dentists in these types of networks.

Indemnity Dental Plans

An indemnity dental plan is often the most flexible and best value. It depends on the network.

With this style of plan there is a list of hundreds of dental procedures. Next to each procedure is a dollar amount. This is the amount you or the dentist will be paid. It does not matter which dentist you use. You can literally go anywhere in the United States.

The indemnity dental plans also have a network associated with them. This is just like a PPO network. If the dentist is in the network, in addition to the dollar amount you or the dentist are paid, you are also entitled to the discounted rate for service.

The combination of these together, when you use an in-network dentist is very powerful and might be the best value. These plans do have a 12 month wait for major work like crowns or root canals.

Discount Dental Plans

I have been using a discount dental plan for many years. It is very inexpensive and fortunately my dentist accepts the plan.

When I visit the dentist, the work is discounted according to a schedule. It has saved me thousands of dollars for a plan that is less than $15 a month for my entire family.

Again, this type of plan is only effective if you find a dentist in the network that you like.

Dental plans for diabetics are no different than dental insurance for anyone else. There is no underwriting. I recommend that you visit this site for complete dental plan information. It will describe all of these plans in detail and give you immediate pricing. Click on dental insurance plans.