Is Dental Insurance More of a Mess than Health Insurance?

We are on my wife's policy and have been for years. Been going to the same dentist for almost a decade. Great people.

About 5 years ago, the insurance changed and they went from in network in that plan to out of network in the other plan. However, the reimbursement rates even for out of network was apparently still very strong, so they basically acted as if they were "in-network" by only charging the co-pays they would charge if they were in-network, and between the co-pay and the reimbirsement they got, they were good and woudl write of any balance.

As of Jan 1, the insurance changed again. They are still out of network on this new plan, however, the out of network rates are supposedly way down. I talked to the insurance person at the dentist and she said for example, the old insurer would pay about $300 for a cleaning, the new one it's $120 if you are out of network. They can't eat this and they have decided they are going to start charging patients with that new plan a $150 co pay.

My wife is a teacher and a lot of people here are on this plan, so many people are impacted.

So we started looking around for another dentist.

This is so frusrtrating. Either we find a new dentist, or we forego an important employment benefit at significant cost to us.

This is so stupid. Who really thought tying health / dental / vision etc coverage to employment was a good idea?

We need to change the tax laws to allow people to write off 100 percent of cost of insurance, without limiation, just like employers can do. Maybe then we can get rid of the stupidity of employer coverage, they can pay that cost in salary instead, and we can all just get our own coverage.