Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Well, that was the question that resonated in my head after leaving my dentist yesterday. Don’t get me wrong, I needed to have a crown put on the root canal, because the tooth was in bad shape, but holy cow $900.00 !

Now here is the financial part of it, out of that only about $450 to $500 will be “covered” by my “insurance company”, and I am out of pocket for the rest, because I am getting a porcelain crown (my insurance covers a lot more of a metal one), but the porcelain one has a life-time guarantee? Very confusing.

I have always found what is covered by insurance plans (especially dental) very arbitrary, and I wondered who makes these decisions? Evidently at my company (a large high tech firm) since the company “self insures” (i.e. Sun Life runs the program but the money comes directly from my company) the company decides what is covered (I was surprised when I figured that one out), so my company decides, but I don’t have any chance to appeal this either {grumble}

The other problem is that since my wife does not have an insurance program, I have been told that the other half which is not covered by my “insurance company” might be covered by her “insurance company”, but I will never know. Remember my favorite rant about dual income families getting unfair advantages over single income families (I should Divorce My Wife?) add this to the list. {grumble}

Now this rant is not ragging on my dentist (he does a great job dealing with a paranoid lunatic like me) but I am not happy about the arbitrary nature of how “what is covered in insurance plans” is decided (especially in big companies).

–C8j