How To Get Your Insurance To Pay For Dental Implants
Dental implants are a popular cosmetic and restorative dental procedure. People want clean, white, straight teeth. That is why you click here and see so many clinics popping up everywhere offering smile makeovers by replacing all of your teeth with implants. A mouth full of implants is one with realistic looking teeth that are sparkling white, evenly sized, perfectly aligned, and straight. Plus, you never have to worry about losing them, because they are anchored to your jaw with screws.
However, most dental insurance plans don't cover cosmetic dentistry. To get insurance to cover them, you have to convince the insurance that you are getting implants for a medical, rather than cosmetic, reason. Whether you want a whole mouth full of implants or just a few of them to replace some select bad teeth, here are some proven ways to get your insurance to cover the cost.
1. Convince Your Insurance Your Tooth Loss Is Due to a Medical Condition
If you can convince your insurance that your need for implants is due to a medical condition, you may not even need dental insurance. Your actual health insurance may cover the cost. You've got to have some good, solid evidence to support your assertion of a medical condition to get them to pay, though.
Often, the best way to establish a medical condition that results in tooth loss is to wait until you lose one tooth, either naturally or by having to have it pulled. Your dentist may diagnose you with bone loss in the jaw that will lead to additional tooth loss.
Other possible diagnoses are abnormalities of the jaw bone and progressive tooth decay. Any of these conditions can cause tooth loss and are general enough that they can apply to a lot of people.
Once you've had one tooth come out and have a diagnosis from your dentist, your insurance is much more likely to pay for you to have the rest of your teeth removed and replaced by implants. As soon as you get the diagnosis on paper, send it in to your insurance and ask them to pay.
2. Prove You Lost Your Teeth Due to an Accident
This is a good way to get dental insurance to cover the cost of one implant or a few of them, though it usually won't cover an entire mouth full of them. After all, most people who lose teeth in accidents don't lose all of them.
Your tooth or teeth don't even necessarily have to be totally removed from your mouth for your insurance to cover implants for an accident. Chipped or otherwise physically damaged teeth can also be covered this way.
Any type of accident will usually be enough to secure your coverage. A car accident, an accident at home or work, or even a physical altercation with another person are all ways your teeth can get damaged and prompt your insurance to pay for dental implants.
3. Check Your Maximum Allowable Annual Coverage
According to MissingTeeth.org, most dental insurance plans have a maximum allowable benefit. This is the amount of money the plan will pay toward your dental expenses each year. It is usually between $1,000 and $1,500, because it is meant to cover basic and routine dental care and treatments.
However, you can sometimes get your insurance to cover the cost of implants up to the maximum annual allowable coverage. This would be the case if your particular policy included implants in things you can use the coverage toward. Not every policy includes implants in allowable costs, but some do.
Check your coverage. You may find your maximum allowable benefit is enough to get one or two implants for teeth that really need it.
Conclusion
It may be an uphill battle to get your dental or medical insurance to cover dental implants, even under the most well documented situations. Insurance plans are reluctant to pay for anything extraordinary in most cases.
However, if you are determined and your circumstances are right, you can successfully pursue a claim to get one or more dental implants covered by your insurance. Just be persistent, send in documentation, and make calls as much as necessary. You'll get your dental implant coverage.