Dr. Jay Goldstein's Blog

I am trying to find cosmetic dental plan that will help me pay for Lumineers. How can I do this?
- Jan

Dear Jan,
If you think through what you’re asking, I think you’ll realize that you want something that isn’t going to happen.

What you want to find is a dental insurance company who will sell you a dental policy, and let’s use a number to help you understand it, let’s say that it costs you $300 a month or $3600 per year. Now you want to get a new smile with Lumineers that will cost $6000 to $15,000, and you want them to help pay for it, so that it doesn’t cost you so much. You can see that the dental insurance company isn’t going to make any money on this deal, so they’re not going to sell you a plan like this. If you ran the insurance company, would you sell a policy on these terms?

Dental insurance makes sense when your employer pays it, because they’re paying for it with before-tax dollars, so it represents a tax savings. But buying it yourself rarely makes sense. Dental expenses are generally reasonably predictable and are rarely of the sort that will wipe out someone’s life savings. So when you realize that the insurance company needs to collect more in premiums than they pay in benefits, you can see that it probably isn’t going to make sense to buy a private dental insurance plan. Medical insurance is different, because you can face life-threatening diseases and astronomical doctor and hospital costs for certain medical problems. Most people will lose money on medical insurance, but you need it to protect yourself against catastrophic loss.

But even with employer-paid dental insurance, they usually exclude cosmetic procedures because they’re elective.

We hope this is helpful.

Related information:
Cost of porcelain veneers
Cost of Lumineers