Dental insurance

Dental plans are innovating with new technologies, and boosting participation in the process.From mobile apps to virtual ID cards to gamification and even Bluetooth smart brushes, it’s not your father’s dental plan anymore. Brokers seeking innovative plan designs for employers should take note. The future is here.

Commentary: Many employers are struggling to get employees to enroll in voluntary programs; busy workers often don’t take the time to understand what’s being offered.

Sun Life Financial Inc., Canada’s third-largest life insurer, has agreed to buy the employee-benefits business of Assurant Inc. to further expand its presence in the U.S.

Vision and dental benefits can be harnessed to play a larger role in employee health than the sum of their parts.

Data suggest a strong correlation between an employee’s overall sense of confidence in the future and the benefits they participate in at work – particularly non-medical benefits such as life insurance, accident insurance and critical illness insurance.

Forty percent of Americans aren’t receiving regular dental care – and it’s costing employers.

Voluntary business is a well-known tool for brokers to increase their revenue while offering new products. But many employers are hesitant to add these products because of additional administrative burdens they can require. Enter the private health care exchange, says Carlos Ferrera, COO of Solstice Benefits and the Solstice Marketplace. With an exchange, the burden is gone, he says.

The departments of Labor, Treasury and Health and Human Services today published final rules amending the definition of excepted benefits to include certain limited coverage that wraps around individual health insurance.

The Obama administration said it erroneously calculated the number of people with health coverage under the Affordable Care Act, incorrectly adding 380,000 dental subscribers to raise the total above 7 million.

The Affordable Care Act’s inclusion of pediatric dental coverage as an essential health benefit has small employers facing a dilemma: Whether to embed dental coverage within a medical plan or offer dental benefits as a stand-alone plan. Market confusion about what these plan options include and exactly what the health reform law requires highlights the need for expert benefit adviser help.

There are few smiles as the ACA’s effect on dental coverage begins to be better understood. Coupling dental benefits with health care coverage may have unintended consequences — and complicate access for employees.

How the ACA has drawn attention to vision care coverage and prompted employers to ask advisers about this voluntary benefit.

The American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry is sounding the alarm that many children aren’t getting the dental care they need — even though the ACA includes pediatric dental care on its essential health benefits roster for small-group plans.

Offering dental coverage and encouraging employees to stick to yearly care regimens can boost employee well-being and overall productivity.

Brokers may be the best intermediary to communicate a matter of pediatric dental compliance to employers and medical carriers operating in numerous states as regulations shift.

Advisers say employers are increasingly purchasing voluntary dental plans as an effort to cut costs, meet new ACA requirements and retain employees.

Industry onlookers are saying that the voluntary exemption in the Affordable Care Act will do little to improve dental health across the nation as projections point to federal and health exchanges doing little to lower costs for Americans. However, can private dental exchanges and savings plans help to fill this void?

Employers, on the whole, report seeing their health care costs continuing to rise – most suggest that costs will jump 19% between 2013 and 2014 alone.

The ACA's pediatric dental requirement brings increased attention to this popular benefit.

BFE speaker says lots remain unknow about the ACA’s effect on dental benefits.