[Ozone]

Hi, I would like to hear from anyone who has experience of “Practice Plan” dental insurance; my wife is a frequent visitor to the dentist and found it necessary to attend an alternative dentist who strongly recommended that she take out the above insurance, which she did;

On looking at the policy is basically includes the following annually: -
Two examinations
Two hygienist appointments
20% off private dental work
dental trauma and emergency insurance worldwide

The monthly fee is approx £13, but doesn’t seem logical to me . . . . the annual premium is £156 . . . . two exams and hygienist amounts to approx £125, plus she had work done over a few weeks and the 20% saving came to approx £370, which means it’s going to take 10 years premiums for them to recover the cost, however, they will never make a profit as she will probably need something else doing soon!

Doesn’t seem to add up to me?

I can appreciate the two exams and hygienist appointments keep you going back to the same practice, the trauma and emergency insurance is more or less worthless having read the policy and very very unlikely that she will ever have a claim, the emergency work section being limited to £120 and so not a great cost I assume.

She basically took the insurance for the 20% saving, however, the thing is, the 20% saving is taken off at the dentist’s estimate stage and is not mentioned on the invoice, so how is the 20% saving presented to and re-claimed from the “Practice Plan” insurance people? Or do they not re-claim the amount of the 20% saving from the insurance company?

Having looked at other dentist’s fees for porcelain crowns they appear to cost around £450, however, the Practice Plan dentist she visited (they don’t publish a fees list) charged her £562.50, which, I thought was a strange figure as most dental treatments are nice round figures and don’t end in 50p; and what I thought even more strange and coincidental was that when the 20% is deducted from the £562.50 the net discounted fee is a nice round £450.00?

Has anyone else experience of this type of insurance? There’s something that just doesn’t sit right with my logical mind and just wondered if anyone can shed some light on it?