Is Denplan Worth it?
With it becoming increasingly difficult to find an NHS dentist, more and more people are having to turn to private dental treatment. The problem is, dental treatment can be expensive! One product on the market that aims to help solve this problem, is Denplan. In this article we’ll explain exactly what Denplan is, how it works and whether it's worth considering if you need dental work.
What is Denplan?
Think of Denplan like Klarna for your teeth. It’s not a dental insurance plan. It allows you to take the (often large) cost of dental treatment, and spread the cost over a number of months. It effectively takes the cost for regular treatment from a private Dentist and spreads this cost over the course of 12 months.
There are 2 main packages available, known as Denplan Care and Denplan Essentials. Denplan Essentials covers the most basic of dental treatment, limited to basically just checkups and advice from your Dentist. The Denplan Care plan includes the Essentials package, as well as more extensive treatment including hygiene treatments, x-rays, fillings, crowns and bridges.
Because of what it covers, you can sign up for the Essentials plan and receive your checkup on the day. For a Care plan, the Dentist will first need to charge for a consultation, where they check your teeth and assess what level of treatment you are likely to need. If you have any major dental treatment needs, you might have to pay for this out of your own pocket before they will accept you on to the Denplan Care package.
What Isn’t Covered by Denplan?
So Denplan covers routine dental treatment and maintenance, depending on your level of package. But what sort of things does Denplan not cover? Honestly, it’s pretty much any type of treatment that can get really expensive. The list includes:
Orthodontic work
Specialist treatment after a referral
Cosmetic procedures like whitening or veneers
Dental implants
Lab fees
There are some supplementary covers that are available from Denplan that can broaden the scope of what is covered, but Denplan should be thought of as a way to budget for regular ongoing teeth maintenance, not a way to avoid large unexpected costs. For this type of situation, regular dental insurance is likely to be a much better option.
What Do People Say About Denplan?
Denplan has had over 500 reviews on the review site Trustpilot. At the time of writing this article, it holds a Trustpilot rating of 4.1, which is good. 70% of those leaving a rating for Denplan provided a 5 star review. With that said, not everyone has such positive things to say, with 24% of people leaving either a 1 or 2 star review.
Some examples of what people are saying about Denplan include:
“Time and again their support has been first class, occasionally asking for further details on a claim but always in a friendly, prompt and helpful manner. Their reimbursements always come through in a timely fashion.”
“I changed provider and now I just get half of my costs back, although Denplan is so much more expensive. It makes much more sense to have a yearly budget for a certain treatment, rather than very small amounts for treatments that can occur daily.”
About Denplan
Denplan is part of one of the biggest insurance companies in the world, AXA. It hasn’t always been part of the group, and first began in 1986. Denplan has over 1.7 million patients in the UK and has over 6,500 Dentists who participate in the program.
Is Denplan Worth it?
Denplan might be worth it if you really struggle with your budgeting. It essentially just spreads the cost of your routine dental treatment over the course of the year, meaning you don’t have to come up with a couple hundred pounds once or twice a year when you go to the dentist.
With that said, for a lot of people it is just making things more complicated, and creating a situation where you need to be worrying about whether your treatment will be covered by the existing plan. Generally speaking, it makes more sense to pay as you go for something like a dentist, as you may find there are times when you need it more and times when you need it less.
It’s also important to keep in mind that the main Denplan packages are not dental insurance. They don’t provide insurance cover to pay a bill that is thousands of pounds, in the event you need major dental work. This is a different type of policy and something you would need to consider in addition to Denplan.
Summary
Denplan is a prepaid dental plan that allows you to spread the cost of routine dental treatment over the course of 12 months. It is fairly limited in the types of issues that it covers, which means it is only really worth it for people who have trouble budgeting for ad hoc expenses through the year.
