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Gather & #39;round children and let me tell you why you should never get
@DeltaDental
.
After a lifetime of having a jacked mouth because I unfortunately grew up with parents who just didn& #39;t take care of me, I finally saved up enough money (so I thought) as an adult to get braces.
@DeltaDental
.
After a lifetime of having a jacked mouth because I unfortunately grew up with parents who just didn& #39;t take care of me, I finally saved up enough money (so I thought) as an adult to get braces.
Now, nevermind the fact that NO insurance policy pays for braces for adults, regardless of the fact that they can cure things like TMJ. That& #39;s a whole other can of worms.
My problem stems from having an impacted tooth my entire life. One of my baby canines just never came out.
My problem stems from having an impacted tooth my entire life. One of my baby canines just never came out.
Considering I was in my 30s when I finally got braces put on, and having taken one basic anatomy class ever, I was pretty sure that if the impacted tooth hadn& #39;t come down yet, it wasn& #39;t ever going to, and asked my orthodontist to just put a veneer over the baby tooth & keep it in
Instead, because male doctors will never believe that female patients know what& #39;s best for their own bodies, I was told that the ONLY course of treatment was to pull the baby tooth and "expose" the adult tooth.
This means there is a chain attached up through my hard palate into the adult tooth and I have an extra set of wires attached to my brackets that is connected to that chain that was supposed to have brought the adult tooth down by now.
Unfortunately, having been trained since birth to be quiet and sweet and nice and never piss off a man, I did what the orthodontist said and got the surgery in September of 2019.
At the time I had a @deltadental HMO, which paid out a whole $74, while I paid over $1,300 out of pocket just for the surgery alone. Never mind the $4000 just for the braces I& #39;ve paid out of pocket because once again, insurance never covers braces for adults.
Then last year, my dentist became a PPO-only provider, meaning I had to switch to a @DeltaDental PPO plan in order to keep him as my dentist. The plan cost 5x more per month just for the premium, but it also covered a lot more, so I gave in and switched.
Regarding the surgery, the adult tooth was supposed to have come down within a few months, but just never did, just like I knew it wasn& #39;t going to, and my orthodontist provided me with two options: get the tooth "re-exposed" and hope that helps move it,
or have the adult tooth pulled, have stem cells extracted, and have a combination of my stem cells and COW BONE implanted into my mouth and a fake tooth screwed in, the latter procedure being one that would definitely take at least another year, and, according the oral surgeon,
will cost me another $4,000 out of pocket. Or, the re-exposure should only cost me around $900 and if it takes, should only be another three month period waiting for the tooth to move down.
So, I signed up for this new @DeltaDental plan on September 1, 2020. The literature on Delta& #39;s website is misleading enough that it makes you think you& #39;re eligible for surgery coverage 15 days after you sign up. This is not the case.
I called the oral surgeon and made an appointment for the re-exposure. They called @DeltaDental and were told no, as a "new" customer, I would have to wait six months for any surgical coverage.
Yup, even though I had a @DeltaDental HMO plan for years, because I switched plans, I now counted as a new customer all over again and was subject to a six month waiting period. All the while, my now 5x more expensive premium is just racking up month after month w/ no coverage.
So March 15 comes and I make my appointment to get this reexposure done. Oral surgeon calls @DeltaDental and confirms coverage, they say they& #39;ll pay half. Yay! I& #39;m supposed to get this surgery done this Thursday, April 15.
After 19 mos of just missing a tooth, and being even more afraid to smile than I was before, and almost 3 yrs now of having braces when it was supposed to be 2.5 years tops, hopefully finally this tooth will move & I can finish this up & just want to smile for once in my life.
EXCEPT.
Today my oral surgeon calls me and says that now, after claiming I was a new customer, suddenly @DeltaDental is saying that I& #39;m actually a pre-existing customer since I had the HMO before, and surprise-- they only cover one exposure on one tooth per lifetime.
Today my oral surgeon calls me and says that now, after claiming I was a new customer, suddenly @DeltaDental is saying that I& #39;m actually a pre-existing customer since I had the HMO before, and surprise-- they only cover one exposure on one tooth per lifetime.
So even though @DeltaDental only shelled out a whole $74 (which I honestly don& #39;t think they ever paid b/c the oral surgeon is saying they never actually found that payment), they will never pay for another re-exposure surgery on this same tooth ever again.
Of course, this clause is mentioned absolutely nowhere in any literature I have ever received from them, ever. Then the CSR I just spoke to had the nerve to tell me "well if you had just told us that& #39;s what you wanted to begin with, we would have told you it wasn& #39;t covered."
Friends, I am a lot of things, but psychic is not one of them. I wouldn& #39;t be in this mess to begin with if I was.
So, TL; DR: After telling me they wouldn& #39;t pay for my dental needs because I was a new customer, @DeltaDental is now flipping and saying they won& #39;t pay for my needs because I& #39;m actually the old customer I& #39;ve been trying to tell them I was all along.
I& #39;m not going to have the money to pay for this surgery again out of pocket any time soon. So at this point I think I& #39;m just ready to take the braces off, give up, live with a missing tooth, and just continue to never smile.
Thank you, @DeltaDental, for stealing that one ray of hope from me, along with my money. Thanks for making everything worse. Thanks for nothing.
UPDATE: I just found out today that have have changed course and are going to cover it. So THANK YOU to everyone who engaged with this thread and put pressure on them to do the right thing. And if you need me to scream at a corporation on here for you let me know 
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