Dental

[…] One possible solution would be for dental insurance to get wrapped in to health insurance policies, both private coverage and Medicare (the majority of seniors in Colorado have no dental insurance, because it’s not part of Medicare). If dental insurance were absorbed into health policies, the premium increases might not be significant. Maternity coverage is a good example of how this could work. In the past, maternity coverage was only available on a few individual health insurance policies in Colorado, as a separate rider that had to be added to the basic coverage. The cost for this rider was prohibitive, because the only people who were adding it were the ones who were planning to use it. But for almost two years now, all new individual policies in Colorado have included maternity coverage, and premiums have definitely not increased by as much as maternity riders used to cost (premiums have gone up, as they had done for years prior to the maternity mandate, but there are many factors involved). If dental coverage were included in health insurance policies, the administrative overhead for these plans could be rolled in with the administration of the health plans, and there would be more people who had coverage and weren’t using it often – their premiums could offset the cost of dental care for people with significant claims. […]