Insurance & cover
The part nobody quotes you
We file dental insurance for our guests, whoever your carrier is. Bring your card and we will check what your plan actually covers before anything gets scheduled.
If you have no plan at all, that is also fine, and there is a straightforward answer for it further down this page.
Two words that get used as if they mean the same thing
Dental offices say “we take your insurance” to mean two different arrangements, and the difference decides what you pay.
Filing
We submit the claim to your carrier on your behalf and the benefit goes to your account. You are not posting forms or chasing a reimbursement. We do this for any carrier.
In-network
A practice has signed a contract with a specific carrier that sets agreed fees for each procedure. It is a commercial agreement between the practice and that insurer, and it is separate from whether a claim gets filed.
Plans differ enormously even inside one carrier. So the useful question is never “do you take my insurance”, but “what does my plan cover here”. Call us with your card in front of you and we will tell you.
Why your plan covers a cleaning but barely dents a crown
Dental insurance is not built like medical insurance, which exists for the catastrophic case. Dental cover works the opposite way round: it pays generously for the cheap, preventive things and runs out exactly when treatment gets expensive.
The annual maximum is the whole story
Most plans cap what they will pay in a year. That cap was set decades ago and has moved very little since, while the cost of laboratory work, materials and staff has not stood still. A cleaning sits comfortably inside it, a crown eats a large share of it, and a full rebuild passes it in a single visit.
That is why a plan can feel generous for years and then seem to vanish the moment you need it. Nothing changed about the plan — the treatment simply crossed the line the plan was written around.
What we do about it
You get the whole number in writing after the exam. It shows what the treatment costs, what we expect your plan to pay, and what is left for you. If that gap changes your decision, say so and we will look at sequencing the work across benefit years, or at financing options.
What we will not do is start treatment and hand you a surprise afterwards.
We accept all PPO insurance
The carriers below are examples, not the whole list. If yours is missing, bring the card anyway — we file claims with any PPO plan.
- Delta Dental
- Guardian
- GEHA
- Blue Cross Blue Shield
- United Concordia
- Anthem
- Humana
- MetLife
- Cigna
- Aetna
- United Health Care
Accepting a PPO plan means we bill your carrier directly. That differs from holding a network contract with them. Your own plan terms decide what it pays, not this list. Call us with your card and we will check yours before you book.
If you have no dental plan
Plenty of our guests do not, and going without care is the expensive option. Small problems are cheap and quiet, and they do not stay either of those things.
The Membership Club is our own annual plan for exactly this, and it is neither insurance nor a discount coupon. You pay the practice directly, and there are no claims, no waiting periods and no annual maximum to run out of.
- Individual — $450 a year
- Family — $1,295 a year
- Periodontal — $750 a year
The Membership Club page lists what each plan includes.
Questions we get asked
Bring your card, and we will check it
Insured or not, the first visit is an exam and a conversation. You will know what things cost before you decide anything.