dental work | Financial Crooks

Somewhere round about age 8 or 9 you start realizing that although the Tooth Fairy has been bringing lovely healthy adult teeth to your child, they seem to have brought ones wrong size. Teeth are coming in at odd angles or in strange places. With a tinge of sadness and worry you realize that your child may be going to need braces to look presentable or to eat comfortably. And with another twinge you realize that you don’t have long to save up for this unplanned expense: Didn’t your nephew get his braces on at 12? And your neighbour’s kid at 13? How much do you need to save for orthodontic work for your child or, worse, your children?

Orthodontists Know You Are Already Afraid of Braces So They Don’t Scare You with Online Prices

Orthodontists are very considerate. They know many parents are already scared of getting braces put on their child’s teeth. What if they hurt? What if they have to have healthy teeth pulled? What if they don’t brush properly and end up with dozens of cavities? What if they use whitening toothpaste while wearing braces and end up with permanent “checkerboards” on their teeth? So Orthodontists don’t usually put the cost of treatment on their websites: instead, they invite you to visit for a consultation.

That is why, right? It isn’t because they’re afraid you might shop for prices online? Or faint?

What Does It Cost to Get Braces?

Orthodontists are quick to point out that every mouth is different and costs can vary widely.

Fair enough. It is true that someone who has a malformed jaw or needs four teeth extracted or is missing permanent adult teeth will need different treatment that someone who just has a mild overbite.

However, as a parent I need and needed some number to budget with. Were we looking at $2000, $5000, $7500 or over $10 000?

Friends and Family May Be Reluctant to Share the Cost of Their Child’s Braces

Surprisingly, to me, many friends and family seemed embarrassed when asked a vague “what price range are braces these days?”

I suspect they were all afraid they’d been “taken” and didn’t want to quote a number in case they discovered they’d paid thousands more than they needed to.

Orthodontics are also a very expensive procedure and people often feel someone is going to accuse them of spending too much on their child “just to look pretty.”

What Did We Pay for Orthodontics Specifically Braces?

I can tell you what we paid, in southern Ontario where there are quite a few orthodontists available.

For a child who only really needed correction of a fairly severe over-bite, it cost $6500.

That’s for the initial installation, all the adjustments over 2.5 years (estimated), a retainer, and an “appliance.”

That’s not including any extractions or any sophisticated appliances to change jaw shape or length. (I was hugely relieved that no extractions were required. I doubt we would have gone ahead if they had been.)

We had guesstimated $10 000 for budgeting a few years ago, so we sighed a bit with relief because we had the money waiting in the bank.

What Did Other People Pay for Braces?

Since I had a hard time getting numbers from relatives and friends, I used the anonymity of the internet to try to get a few other opinions.

Here are some of the results:

For a child in 2013, $6910
For a teen for 5 years of treatment including a Herbst appliance and braces, $10 000
For a child, two quotes for the same work in 2014: $6500, $7000
For a child, for braces for 1 year, in 2007, $4500
For a child in 2004, $5500
For a child in 1999, $5000
For an adult, 28, in 2014: 5800
For an adult $7-8 000

So there seems to be a bit of a range.

What Should You Budget for Orthodontic Work or Braces for Your Child?

First, I’d check what, if any, coverage your work place provides for braces for a dependent child. As I mentioned in another article, our work coverage pays for only $1500 of work per child, and it costs us more than that in premiums to get it!

Then, I’d start with a budget of $10 000 per child less the amount paid for by insurance.

If you’re like most people, that may be “an impossible dream!” Still, it gives you a number to shoot for.

A more practical number may be $6 000 per child less the insurance amount.

Remember it is possible for adults to get braces, so unless you child is experiencing pain or in dental distress, you may decide not to get any orthodontic work done at all. It may be more important to save for your own retirement or for your child’s education than for cosmetic dentistry.

Don’t get bullied into spending money you don’t have!

How Can You Ensure You Get the Best Value for Orthodontic Work

Several people mentioned

Always wear your retainer for the recommended time to prevent teeth shifting back
Don’t start getting orthodontic work too early if the child is comfortable: wait till the jaw has grown
Always make sure you consider the “do nothing” alternative; It doesn’t mean you are a “bad” parent!

Related Reading

Are We Losing Money On Our Dental Plan Because of Orthodontic Coverage for Our Children?

Join In
Did your child need orthodontic work? Did you have some or all of the money saved? Did you have insurance help? If you are comfortable doing so, it would be great to add to our list of possible costs by adding your bill to a comment for others’ budgeting benefit. Please share your opinions and facts with a comment.

A few years ago, my husband’s employer was taken over by another company. It didn’t take long for the benefits to get cut: we went from having good dental and medical coverage, and high life and disability insurance to being told we could buy selected benefits using a “shopping cart” funded with a percentage of his annual salary. Sound familiar to anyone else? Anyway, while reading the benefits info again recently, I began to wonder if we are actually losing money on the orthodontic coverage provided for our children.

Dental Plans May Strictly Limit Reimbursement for Orthodontic Work

The problem for the insurance company is that orthodontic work is expensive. It’s also becoming very common: to the point where no one teases kids about their braces any more because they see them on teeth in dozens of mouths. In fact when one of my children’s friends had braces put on, many of her classmates didn’t notice, and even when they did they couldn’t remember if she’d had them on for a year or if they were new.

So to reduce how much dental insurance plans have to pay out, or conversely to keep from having to raise the premiums unacceptably high, many plans limit the coverage for orthodontic work.

Our plan pays nothing for orthodontic work for adults.

For dependant children, it has set a maximum lifetime claim of $1500 per child.

Have you checked the price for a regular course of treatment for orthodontic work? Let’s just say $1500 isn’t going to get you through the first appointment much less the following two years.

How Our Dental Plan and Premiums Work

Our dental plan has another interesting twist:

If you want ANY dental coverage for your child, you have to insure all of your children and you must pay the orthodontic premium for each child.

That sounds reasonable at first glance: they don’t want you only paying premiums for your child with enamel problems and teeth coming in everywhere but where they are needed, and not paying premiums for your three other children who have perfect teeth and never need even a filling or a polishing.

It’s when you look into the details of that “orthodontic premium for each child” that you wince.

And they charge an orthodontic premium for each year of your child’s life until they are 19.

How Much Premium Will I Pay for Orthodontics?

Under our plan, for our family, the orthodontic premium is currently $140.40 per year.

So someone with two children enrolled from birth till when the premiums stop being applied when each child turns 19, should expect to pay $2667.60 or more in premiums.

That doesn’t even assume that the premiums increase. For us, it’s increased, of course, even in the four years we’ve had this insurer from $111.36 to $140.40 per year. That’s about a 26% which is well above the rate of inflation these past 4 years.

Will We Lose Money Paying Our Orthodontic Premiums for Our Dental Plan

If we had been enrolled in this plan for years, then yes, we would definitely have lost money. We would have paid over $2667.60 in premiums to get a maximum reimbursement of $1500 for our one child who needs orthodontics.

In our case, though, we were only forced into this plan when our children were older. Will we still lose money?

Yep. Assuming no further premium increases, and based on the actual premiums we’ve paid to date, we will pay $1508.64 in premiums to get back the $1500 for which our one child is eligible.

Sigh.

Benefits? Who called this beneficial? For us to have to give money to the insurance company?

I can just imagine how any employee feels who has several children who never need orthodontics!

Admittedly, there should be a benefit to someone who has several children who need orthodontic work done.

Why Would We Get Dental Coverage for Our Children If We’re Going to Lose Money on the Orthodontic Premium?

First, in our plan you can’t opt out of coverage for your children unless you can prove they have coverage under another plan. (I’m not sure whether you could fight this in a court or not.)

Second, the dental insurance also provides coverage for all of the other more routine dental work a child needs: cleanings, fillings, x-rays, examinations etc.

I believe we are saving money by having coverage for those procedures although I would have to start adding up our bills to be sure as our children have been blessed with very healthy teeth.

Well, at least we’re saving money–unless we could not convince our dentist to drop his billing rate…. Some dentists will charge less for the same procedure if you have no insurance. They don’t have to, of course, but they may.

Keep an Eye on Your Benefits and Make Sure They’re Benefitting YOU and Not the Insurer

This review has taught me that it’s important to keep an eye on our benefits. For example, if I was a younger parent I might very well be lobbying our HR department to make changes to this Orthodontic insurance premium. Like dropping it altogether!

I think I’d better check our Eye Health coverage next. Something makes me wonder if we’re breaking even on that coverage or not. And at least that coverage can be waived if we’re losing money!