[Nickshu]

I tell most people to not bother with dental insurance. If you take the same amount of money per month, save it, and apply it to your dental expenses you will come out ahead 99% of the time. However many people get dental plans thru their employers. Dental "insurance" is not "insurance" at all, why most providers refer to it as a "dental plan". It is designed to help reduce the costs of your dental care, never to cover your needs. Unfortunately for many patients they choose to only be as orally healthy as their "plan" will allow them to be. I could go on and on about this philosophically but I'll spare you the details.

Lab fees for crowns....I'm a periodontist so take my comments with a grain of salt b/c I have not done a crown in over 10 years. Lab fees vary. Mostly you pay for quality of workmanship. Success and failure in dentistry is often measured in microns. Microns which most of the time are hand sculpted, so you are paying for quality, materials, but mostly workmanship. Keep in mind that all dentistry is in a constant state of failure, no matter what. It just depends on how fast things are failing. This, of course, is highly dependent on how good your homecare is, how healthy you are, and how genetically susceptible you are to oral disease.

I maintain an opinion that I often share which people are offended by: Dentistry overall is pretty inexpensive in most cases. It just seems expensive to most people b/c the cost of often out of pocket. Also many people put off treatment and let things get very severe, painful, and much more expensive before seeking care, then are surprised that it's so costly once they finally show up. Try going to your local ER with nothing but dehydration. Two hours in the ER with nothing more than one bag of IV fluid will cost you about $7000. A crown which will eat, chew, function, smile for 10-20 years is $1000, a gum graft I do that will last a lifetime and save a natural tooth from being lost is $1600. That's great value. Value is hard to portray to patients. I have people sit in my chair every day who tell me that they can't afford treatment, then I watch them drive out of the parking lot in a $65,000 F-150 pickup. It's not a question of can't afford, it's a question of how much you value your smile, oral health, and quality of life. Just my $0.02 from someone in the trenches. Above all else I value taking care of my patients the way I would want to be. Please don't think that I share the above cynicism with the patient's in my chair, I love what I do, love the relationships I have with my patients and referring doctors and enjoy going to work every day. This forum is just a place I can share some thoughts....