Today many people have dental insurance. This is an excellent benefit, but it often can be quite confusing and lead to misunderstanding.
On of the biggest problems is that although we call it insurance it is not insurance in the correct sense of the word. It is in most cases your boss providing you with assistance for your dental care with pretax dollars. That is because in dentistry, at least regarding its simplest, basic procedures, is not an insurable event. You cannot "insure" a repeatable event like cleaning and exam two, three or four times a year unless the “insurance” company charges you or your boss the price of those cleanings plus something for their administrative expenses and profit (to which they are entitled).
Insurance works when it is designed to protect you from catastrophe and lots of people buy it, and very few people use it, like automobile or homeowners or even life and medical insurance. It is not for something that happens repeatedly, year after year. Also, because insurance companies are under pressure from employers to keep costs down, benefits have not increased significantly over the past thirty years or so. When dental insurance became popular in the late 70’s and early 80’s an average yearly maximum benefit was $1000 to $1500. Today the maximum is often the same although the cost of providing all dental services has gone up significantly. For the same reasons it is usually not cost effective to purchase dental insurance as an individual, it only works when a large group buys it and (unfortunately) many don’t use it.
So again, the key is to understand what dental “insurance” really is and to enjoy the benefit if you have it and to use it to help maintain an important part of your appearance and overall body health.