Question: What is a dental plan compared to dental insurance? Not sure the difference.

Answer: A dental plan or rather a dental discount plan is a plan that helps provide dental care services at a reduce cost to you with dental providers of the plan. Consumers typically pay an enrolment fee and an annual or monthly fee and get access to discounted services from member providers.

Discounts can range anywhere from 15 percent to 80 percent. Dental insurance would be your HMOs, PPOs and Indemnity plans. You can see that with dental insurance their are a few plan types they do work differently and depending on your dental care needs you may prefer one over the other. Dental insurance is also designed to help reduce your cost for dental services. Consumers who go the insurance route also get the benefit of oversight from their state department of insurance, which could prove helpful if they have insurance complaints.