Non-surprise!: dental insurance remains a complete and utter scam. I’m still waiting on the follow-up phone call, but some mail I got over the weekend has made me think that, for the second time in six months, my dental insurer has decided they aren’t responsible for paying for more than a thousand dollars’ worth of work that, before the procedure, my dentist assured me they would.
Last time it was because they only pay for dental technologies that are no longer in use — trepanning, internally-administered quicksilver, that sort of thing. This time the procedure was safely archaic — no joke, my molar is now filled with a tree sap discovered in 1842 — so I suspect that instead they’ll say they’re off the hook because I was switching jobs. In fact I was doubly covered for much of the period in question, with two — two! — separate insurance providers supposedly responsible for the care and upkeep of my mouth. There was no point at which I did not have dental coverage. I was awash in dental coverage! And yet…
It turns out that while an individual dental procedure occupies an infinite amount of time when viewed through the lens of subjective experience, when the perspective is shifted to the realm of paperwork even vast swaths of appointments suddenly collapse into single instantaneous points, which are located such that entropy/out-of-pocket-expenses are maximized.
Anyway it’s all quite fascinating in a mathematical and ontological sense, but at the same time it’s also really goddamn irritating.
Preach it, brother!! I had the same insurance and it does suck.
God, they suck. They called my proposed bridge procedure “cosmetic”, to the tune of $3000. Fucking punks. I still haven’t re-visited the issue out of rage. PURE RAGE.