[nerdponx]

This is ass backwards to me

Preventative dental work is dirt cheap and corrective dental work is relatively rare, and costs rarely spiral out of control.

That sounds like a much better deal to me, as an insurer, than insuring any other body part.

[chimeracoder]

> Preventative dental work is dirt cheap and corrective dental work is relatively rare, and costs rarely spiral out of control. That sounds like a much better deal to me, as an insurer, than insuring any other body part.

When costs are easily predictable, that's actually a terrible case for an insurance model. Insurance is about smoothing risk, not making things cheaper. In fact, for services that are relatively cheap and predictable, insuring against those events will always be more expensive than paying for them out of pocket, because of the additional overhead.

Financially, the expected value of insurance is negative (the sum of all expected payouts is less than the sum of all future premiums). The reason it's valuable is because it reduces the variance in the month-to-month payments, which is a useful product for some people.

[maxerickson]

One thing with dental care is that it is likely financially reasonable to charge someone less for insurance if they are receiving preventative care. A small filling costs much less than a root canal.

[mtdewcmu]

I think the issue with dentistry is that half-assed dental treatment is affordable, you just pull the teeth; if you want decent work to save the teeth -- then it gets expensive.

[ghaff]

Which is presumably one of the reasons why some more expensive dental treatments like crowns are only covered at 50% or so by most insurance. They're considered at least partly cosmetic.

Sometimes extractions make sense in any case, but they're always going to be cheaper than multi-visit restorations of various sorts.

[maxerickson]

Preventative care isn't really insurable though.