Healthy Tips For Better Life

Dental Options With Or Without Insurance

Looking for Dental treatment options? Does the price of Dental treatment reach well beyond what your insurance will cover? Do you need dental coverage? If so first look carefully at what your dental insurance is costing you and if you do not have insurance price it out and consider the total annual payout, the cost per month and the co-pay amount per service. By now you may all of the sudden feel like your insurance is not the best deal after all for dental work...Read on!

Have you considered Dental tourism? Give one of the many agencies a call; you might be directed to a great dentist here or abroad. These agencies will help you with every aspect of your trip, appointments, hotel, and billing but if you are like me, you may want to work directly with the best qualified dentist and business to get the personalized care you need completed at a fair cost and cut out the "tourist agency" feel to setting up a dentist appointment.

If I have your attention at this point and you are thinking about traveling to save a fortune in dental care I would like to stop this thought you are having at once. What if you were traveling "first and foremost" because the best quality care, the best service, best value and world class follow up could be found outside of your present city or country. Isn't that more important than cost alone? This is exactly what I found in San Salvador, El Salvador.

In short the Dentists and oral surgeons in the US were recommending work based on cost and insurance coverage's. We saw a couple of professionals here in the states and were given estimates for minimal work and just a ballpark of what doing the work the "best way" would cost. In my opinion there were very obvious judgments being made on what I was able or willing to spend. Why did this happen? This could be because I insisted on legitimate and reasonable fee's which should go directly to the the Dentist/Dr/Clinic taking care of my mouth, not unreasonable fee's subsidizing the legal and insurance business or so Doctors can pay excessive malpractice insurance or build multi-million dollar offices-ever seen one of those? I personally am most interested in professional dental qualifications and a well equipped, modern facility not marble interiors and $250,000 waiting rooms!

After many emails and a conference call directly with my dentist abroad I was convinced based on the substantiating data provided supporting the Dentists treatment plan, that the procedure being recommended in my hometown was substandard for my long term comfort.

Let me tell you about our trip to El Salvador and my Dental experience. I had an experience of a life time! Not only was my trip for my dental care, this was our honey-moon, as we were recently married in October. We contacted the Staff at the Dental clinic in El Salvador directly and made my dental appointments and collected information regarding places to stay, things to see and transportation options while in country from our dentists professional staff. We did have the clinic arrange for a concierge service to aid in our transportation and sight-seeing needs while we were in this country. They set us up with a tour company who took care of all our needs outside of dental care. The owner of this service was always easily reached and at our service day and night with a simple phone call or email from the time we were picked up at the airport to the time we were dropped off to leave.

Let's get back to the service from our dentist abroad. This was our first trip to see our new dentist who is board certified in America with as many or more certifications and qualification than some of your local dental practitioners. My husband and I had checked into a recommended hotel and in less than 2 hours of our arrival a gentlemen holding a large beautiful bouquet of flowers came walking in to the hotel patio where we were sipping our first taste of Salvadorian coffee. I joked with my husband and said; "you shouldn't have" and he said "I didn't". The gentleman then said my name and gave me the flowers. I read the note and it read Welcome to El Salvador it is a pleasure to have you with us and this was signed by the dentist. My husband and I were not only surprised but very touched!

We had our first appointment with our dentist on the day we arrived and he introduced us to his staff and gave us a tour of the clinic which is clean, modern and well equipped. I was very impressed with the language ability of his staff and comfort in the English language. The dentist and I spent time talking about my concerns and the additional work and support for that work which we initially discussed on a conference call in the states. I did not feel rushed to make decisions as the dentist took all the time I needed to answer my questions. All options were explained and medical documentation was available to support these recommendations.

The surgery went well and I experienced no pain during the procedure. I was under IV sedation during the surgery and I was also given antibiotics before, during and after. After the surgery and the Novocain wore off some expected discomfort was felt due to the amount of work and the procedure that I went through but not enough to keep me down for more than a few hours that afternoon!

The evening of my surgery while resting in our hotel the phone rang, to my surprise our dentist was calling to see how I was feeling and if we had any questions or concerns! Has your dentist ever done that? This was just one of than many follow up calls he made to us ensuring our comfort with both the dental work and our stay in El Salvador!

Two days before we left to come home our dentist invited us out to dinner with him and his beautiful wife. Choosing a nice Italian restaurant we all had a great conversation about the dental care I had received, his practice in the states and his return to his home country to El Salvador. I was very pleased by how much he cares and that he won't give anything less but his very best!

I want to touch on the safety in El Salvador. My husband and I felt very safe where ever we walked, shopped or dined. If you read up on the Civil war and history of what this country went through 12 years ago, it is sad however at this point El Salvador is modernizing and doing just great rebuilding and making the past battle ground safe and beautiful.

We toured the city on our own. We think we left our foot-prints in El Salvador. We had our concierge take us on a city tour shopping at the markets downtown, going to the museums, checking out the volcano overlooks and of course out to eat at some awesome restaurants! Another trip we took was up to the beautiful San Salvador volcano and what a breath taking site this was! My husband, who will not pass up a fitness challenge, went back up the next day to climb down into the crater. There is no way I was going to attempt this so I accepted a day trip out with my dentists wife who took me shopping and to get a pedicure while my crazy husband was exploring the inside of a volcano!

Not only was the dental experience at this dental clinic World-Class but also the hospitality and kindness I will never forget as long as I live. We are planning on going back in June to have some follow up work done but also to make more memories that will last a life time!

I cannot begin to thank this dentist enough for his exceptional dental care and hospitality and I can only hope others find can see there are exceptional, proffessional and safe options to high costly dental work which bypass the insurance and legal barriors that are driving prices up at home.