How Does Smoking Affect Dental Insurance
Dental insurance companies use specific factors to determine your insurance rates, and one of the factors that they use often is smoking. They consider the risk involve before they accept a smoker. So, how does smoking affect your dental insurance rate?
- Generally if you smoke, your dental premium tends to cost more than people who do not smoke. The reason for the disparity is the fact that smoking creates problems such as tooth discoloration. Teeth discoloration usually requires a dentist to remove the stains, and this equals more dental visit to the dentist than non-smokers. Thus, the dental carrier has to pay more because of the additional cleaning treatments.
- Halitosis often occurs in part due to smoking. This when compounded with tar and nicotine on the oral cavity creates more gum diseases than someone who does not smoke.
- A smoker also has a higher rate of extractions than non-smokers, and they often have complications after extraction such as dry socket disease. Thus, the dental insurance company factors all the risk involved and usually charge higher premiums.
- Additionally, smokers have a higher incident of oral cancer so another reason why you are charged more for dental coverage.
- Dental carriers may refuse to cover someone who smokes because they may consider the risk too large. Thus, you have less option to buy dental coverage than someone who does not smoke.
- You have tougher time getting individual dental insurance coverage if you are smoker because the insurance carrier may look at some of your dental problems as a pre-existing condition. Thus, your best option is to find group coverage instead because dental insurance carriers can spread the risk to the entire group and reduce their risk factor, which is not possible with an individual plan.