Should I Get My Teeth Cleaned Without Dental Insurance?

My health insurer wants me to sign up for a dental plan, but I’m not sure it’s the best financial choice.

My last dental checkup was in either late 2011 or early 2012, back when dental care was included as part of my employer-based health insurance package. (These were the pre-freelance years.)

So, when my health insurer sent me an email inviting me to add dental coverage to my Bronze health insurance, I figured I’d take a look.

The package in itself doesn’t seem that bad. I can choose between a $50 and a $75 deductible, which entitles me to two oral exams and teeth cleaning per year at a $20 copay each. More serious dental work, such as root canals, runs in the $400 range, but I’m mostly interested in the teeth cleaning. (There’s this tiny gap between my bottom two front teeth that slowly fills up with plaque, and even though I can knock some of it out by daily flossing, I can never get it as clean as the dental hygienist does.)

The premiums don’t look that bad either, until you add them all up; the $75 deductible dental plan would cost me $30.40 per month, or $364.80 a year. (Probably a little more than that, because I’ll turn 35 in November and transition into the $32.10 per month bracket.)

When I look at that $364.80 figure—plus the copays and the $75 deductible—I feel like it would be smarter to go pay for a teeth cleaning out of pocket, the way I pay for my annual eye exam out of pocket.

The Cost of Getting Your Eyes Checked (When Your Health Insurance Does Not Include Vision)

My most recent eye exam cost $184.30. If I can get my teeth cleaned for roughly the same amount, I could save over $200.

Here’s the funny thing: dentist websites don’t like to tell you how much an out-of-pocket teeth cleaning costs. (They don’t like to tell you how much anything costs.) In fact, when you stop looking at local dentist websites and search “dental costs without insurance,” one of the top results is a Billfold article by Meaghan O’Connell:

How Much Should the Dentist Cost?

The fact that The Billfold is a top source for “dental costs without insurance” is both proof that we’re awesome and that there is so little other information out there. (It might also be proof that Google knows I work for The Billfold, so I’d be interested to see where the article shows up in your search results.)

Meaghan paid $200 out-of-pocket for her teeth cleaning, and reconciles the expense as follows:

On the walk home I was thinking about $200, and if that experience was worth it. On one hand, NO. On the other hand, what should it cost? I pay $80 for a haircut if you include tip, and this involved scraping plaque off of my teeth, and suctioning spit and blood out of my mouth, and like, getting sprayed in the eyes with whatever they use to do the polishing part (the worst). I don’t think I would perform that service on someone for less than $200, so I accept it.

For me, this whole dental dilemma is less about whether it would be better for me to go pay for a $200 teeth cleaning out of pocket or sign up for the $364.80-plus-copay-and-deductible insurance. (In my individual situation, knowing my pain-free mouth and history of daily flossing, of course I would be better off paying for a teeth cleaning out of pocket, and I should just find a dentist and go.)

It’s more about having no real information on which to make an educated decision except a Billfold article.

There is one more way of getting real information, of course, and it involves calling the dental offices directly. (Yes, it’s worth noting that I almost forgot that I could do this.) I talked to a few dental offices and learned that, yes, a standard teeth cleaning and exam with X-rays will run around $200 without insurance—which does mean that it would be less expensive to just get the teeth cleaning and not get the dental insurance, if I’m willing to trust my gut instinct that my teeth are fine and just need a little plaque scraping.

Would you pay $364.80 plus copay and deductibles for dental insurance? Would you pay $200 for the teeth cleaning? Or would you just keep on flossing and brushing and hoping you were doing a good enough job?

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