Regarding Dr. Ronald Inge’s February JADA article, "The Ins and Outs of Dental Insurance," the difficult issues of third-party dental reimbursement are further obfuscated when it is referred to as "dental insurance." It is not "insurance," and it is certainly past time for JADA to cease using this misnomer.
Insurance, as commonly used here, may be defined as "coverage by contract whereby one party undertakes to indemnify or guarantee another against loss by a specified contingency or peril."1 In general, this definition meets the expectation of our patients, but does not reflect the reality of their coverage, which is usually a limited benefit of between $1,500 and $2,500 yearly, with specific indications for its use.
Despite the fact that dental benefits are often administered by insurance carriers and that our patients, their employers, our staffs and even we dentists often refer to this benefit as insurance, does not make it so, and only adds to the difficulties we have communicating with our patients about reimbursement issues. We should all stop using this erroneous phrase, and we should certainly not perpetrate this significant misapprehension in our own journal.
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