Health Insurance Company

Each health insurance company has a different way of organizing their various health insurance plans for their clients. For example, Aetna, widely regarded as perhaps the best health insurance company in America, separates their dental health insurance benefits from the rest of their medical coverage. A client even receives two health insurance cards, one for dental and one for medical health insurance. And you would think that a health insurance company would be utterly thorough in their coverage for its patients, since they’ve divided up their benefits into medical and dental. This medical health insurance company has got it all covered. Or do they? What if is there a medical procedure or surgery that falls outside of what this health insurance company defines as “medical” and “dental?”

Can you think of one?

Try oral surgery. Your dentist might strongly advise you to go see an oral surgeon about a couple of root canals. Your oral surgeon might say that you need those root canals and your dentist might even agree, but your health insurance company might not.

According to some health insurance company policies, such as Aetna’s, they do not cover oral surgery. Despite being performed inside your mouth and needing a recommendation from your dentist, it is not considered dental. The policy of a health insurance company like Aetna tends to regard this as being surgery, but not needed surgery. Therefore, they will not cover oral surgical procedures such as root canals.

You need to get your teeth cleaned, your cavities filled, that broken arm looked at and your heart checked out, but you do not need to get any root canals. They are not life threatening and people get by perfectly well without them.

Though it would improve your life and health to get those root canals done, some health insurance companies still won’t cover the procedure, despite the fact that it’s painful and bloody recovery that tends to take a week or so. Patients need to take that week off work to rest and recuperate. They are prescribed painkillers and penicillin to take the edge off the pain and stop any infections that might develop due to the process.

All this takes money and it will even take more money to pay off any bills you have lingering from that week you had to take off work from.

While not every health insurance company will do this to you, a good number of the bigger name health insurance companies like Aetna and Blue Cross/Blue Shield will. A responsible health insurance company would cover the costs for oral surgery due to the fact that without it your oral health might decline or you might eventually start developing painful problems with your teeth and gums. As previously stated, some people get by without getting root canals done because they have no insurance or their medical insurance company doesn’t handle it, but they may be getting by in pain and are aware that in the future there will be even more pain.

This is the very type of thing a health insurance company should be covering because the whole point of having benefits is to be able to pay for a procedure like that. People don’t need to see either, not necessarily, but that doesn’t mean that vision problems aren’t covered by a health insurance company’s plans.