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Problem Teeth But No NHS Dentist?

To safeguard my family I took out a Dental Plan which seemed too good and it proved to be so initially. At 39 pounds per month I have paid 585 pounds out so far in premiums and received back 1,577.50 pounds saving 992.50 pounds in costs. However, the insurer has written to its 80,000 policyholders and explained that the two-year-old plan "has exceeded our expectations in both popularity and levels of claims", some of the benefits are to be reduced and premiums will rise.

In West London NHS dentists are scarce and the practice we use is a private care only dentist. They are excellent but fees are high so I believe that even with an increase in our premium and less cover we will continue to benefit from our dental insurance policy.

We were landed with sudden, large dental bills for major treatment when we were not covered and with having children decided that we should insure against future shocks and great expense for all of us.

There are several "capitation" plans available from private dentists but we felt these were not for us. They assess your teeth, estimate your dental needs and calculate your monthly premium accordingly. This was expensive for us because of my poor dental history. We opted for a dental insurance policy - no assessments are required and you are not tied to any private or NHS dentist.

Our deal was perfect giving 100 per cent payback on all maintenance work and 75 per cent of the cost of treatment up to 2,000 pounds a year, for 34 pounds a month plus 5 pounds for children under 18. You must be between 18 and 60; you are covered for trips up to 28 days anywhere in the world, but not for cosmetic or orthodontic work.

So, we worked out that if we had all the recommended checks and maintenance that when we claimed back what we were entitled to, that we would actually only be paying 108 pounds per year for our cover.

You can claim straight away for maintenance work and after 3 months for all other work. Claiming is straight forward - we pay the dentist, send the claim form and receipt verified by the dentist, and payment goes into the bank soon after.

Our monthly premium will go up slightly more than 25 per cent, the annual limit for maintenance claims goes from 150 to 100 pounds and we can only claim 50 per cent not 75 per cent of treatment costs up to 1,000 instead of 2,000 pounds.

For people using an NHS dentist who want a budget plan offering a lower level of benefits, there is a new core plan available for NHS dentist users costing 7.70 pounds per adult, 13.95 pounds for two adults plus 2 pounds for up to four children monthly.

I will compare the market again when the time comes as there are always new schemes coming onto the market. One of the largest supermarkets for example offers a slightly higher premium but good cover, but for now, our policy is still fairly competitive and if we wanted to switch we would have to wait 3 months before we could make any claim.

Finding an NHS dentist - Go to nhs.uk, click on dentists on the find services page, put in your postcode and click on each surgery to see if they are taking new NHS patients.

Numbers of people seeing NHS dentists continues to drop even with efforts to improve provision by the government. Statistics show that figures dropped from 28.1 million to 27.3 million after new guidelines were brought in for dentists

In England, in the past 2 years 49.3 per cent of all adults, and 69.9 per cent of children, whose treatment is free, went to an NHS dentist.

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