Dental Insurance

I found a few reasons for this:

• Doctors and dentists have just been historically separated from each other. They train in different schools, and practice in different locations.
• Health insurance started in the 1920s and 1930s at hospitals, with doctors who practiced there. Since dentists never practiced in hospitals, they didn’t get in on the ground floor.
• The dental care financial model is different than medical. Medical tends to cover for catastrophic problems – those problems above your deductible. Dental is designed to cover maintenance issues.
• Dental problems are – rightly or wrongly – perceived as a hygiene problem that are largely preventable by good habits (though, let’s be honest, the same should true of most medical issues today).

Interestingly, most of the reasons above also apply to vision care and optometrists.