I want to clear up some confusion on dental & vision coverage in your medical coverage.
As crazy as it sounds, you need separate insurance for any dental needs as well as for your eyes and your ears. Medical insurance does not cover glasses, hearing aids, or dental work, they don’t.
When does medical cover those things?
- Sometimes medical will cover wisdom teeth extractions, if they’re impacted, and they do surgical extractions.
- Or maybe if you’ve been in an accident, sometimes medical will have some benefit for dental.
- If you have a disease in your mouth or eyes, if you ended up with cancer or something like that, that had to be removed, that would fall into your medical.
Regarding vision:
- A basic vision insurance plan would cover (with a co-pay) your eye exam and then give allowances for glasses and contacts.
- Then, a percentage off anything over the allowance
- Anything related to eye diseases would be covered under your medical insurance.
- If you need glasses or contacts, vision insurance is helpful and usually pays for itself, as it is cost-effective.
Regarding dental:
- This is on a case-by-case basis.
- If you’re going to need a bunch of work, or you’d like to have a safety net of having that, then some different options are PPO options.
- That means any dentists can take it and I’m going to talk more about that next week.
Tip: look at your Summary of Benefits on your medical it will say what’s covered.
Now, the caveat to that is sometimes there are some benefits for children as far as an exam for dental and vision. Usually, it doesn’t cover glasses or any work. But a lot of the plans have built-in pediatric coverage. Always helps to check!
