Hello, I’m Susan Geal, manager of Talent Strategies for Delta Dental of Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana.

And welcome to the virtual intern experience.

Before we dive into insurance, I wanna talk to you a little bit about how human beings work better together.

If you picture me versus a lion on the Serengeti, I’m gonna lose every single time.

I do go to the gym and I do work out, but I’m not strong enough to take a lion.

But if I get my friends with me, we can live alongside lions and survive.

And so that really is something that I want you to carry forward because we’re stronger together as people, and it helps not just me, but it helps my group of people or my society.

So shooting back to insurance, the things that we need to understand is that there are things I can do on my own, and then there are things I can do with my group better.

So if we look at how we keep each other safer together, this is one of those things that we can do.

So if I look at the basis of insurance, I drive a car, I have auto insurance. There are a lot of other people out on the roads who also drive cars, and hopefully they have auto insurance.

And so the way that this all works is I say, okay, if I go hit a tree, I have to pay for my car outta pocket. That might be expensive, but if I hurt and hit somebody, that’ll could get very expensive.

If I had to pay for somebody’s medical bills out of my pocket, my budget is not set up to be able to say, okay, it’s a very rare occurrence that I would hit anything or injure somebody. But if it were to happen, I would have to go dig into my savings and try to pay for that myself.

For most people, that’s not practical.

But again, going back to this idea of we’re stronger and safer together, if all of us on the road have auto insurance and we pay a carrier or an insurance company our money, and we say, here’s my monthly premium that’s going toward this.

It’s not going necessarily toward my accident, but it’s going toward this insurance company.

So then let’s say the rear occurrence happens, and I do hit a tree.

The insurance company is able to take not only my premiums, but the premiums and the amounts that other people have paid, and they’ve been able to invest that and find ways to cover all of these things.

And you put that all together, then they’re able to cover the cost that I had for hitting the tree or somebody’s medical insurance.

And so it’s a way of me saying, I’m gonna make a bet by placing my money with this insurance company and offloading some of the risk for myself and my family onto the insurance company.

And the insurance company is able to do this because with a law of large numbers and being able to spread things out across groups of people, they’re able to financially manage that situation in a way that helps make all of us safer together.

So now that you know a little bit about how insurance works, generally, I’m gonna demystify a little bit about, oh, dental insurance.

This is something that we don’t talk about and might be somewhat invisible the way it operates in your life.

So you may be on your parents’ dental insurance, go get a cleaning twice a year, walk out of the dentist’s office. You’ve got your toothbrush, you’ve got your sticker, you’ve got your floss and your preferred toothpaste, and you don’t give ’em a credit card, you don’t do anything. You just set up another appointment. You come back in six months.

So what is going on behind the scenes there?

This is one of those pieces that’s really, really helpful about having insurance.

There are different kinds of insurance. So we talked about auto insurance, there’s also life insurance, medical insurance, there’s pet insurance, there’s lots of things.

One of the things I like to think about is there’s insurance you wanna have and not use, and then there’s insurance you want to have and use.

So every day that I wake up and I don’t use my life insurance policy is a really, really good day.

That’s insurance I wanna have and not use at least for a very long time.

Then I wanna look at insurance that I wanna have and use.

Dental insurance is one of those insurances.

And the whole reason why is if we can get after preventive oral healthcare, we can do a lot to make me healthier, me less expensive, like there are all these really, really important benefits we can help my overall health.

And it all really starts with that preventive care that dental insurance helps to provide.

So as an example, some people think that there’s this myth that you know, Hey, dental insurance is great and all, but I would be better just paying out of pocket because then I’m only paying for what I use and I’m not using that.

You know, group dynamic that goes on with an insurance.

The reason, and I’m gonna share some examples about why that’s not true, and I’m gonna use an example of a family of four.

So if I’m looking at a family of four without insurance, you can see that I’m paying nothing for my premium, but when I need to pay for preventive visits, I’m paying $1,400.

Let’s say in one of those cleanings, there’s a filling that’s needed and that costs $800.

So now we’re at $2,200 for the family of four without insurance.

Now we’re gonna talk about a family of four that has dental insurance.

Yes, they’re paying that premium and they’re paying $1,200. You’ll notice that they’re not paying anything for the preventive visits.

Like I said, this is insurance that you wanna have and use.

So you’re going in, you’re getting your cleanings. Let’s say they still find a cavity and need to put in a filling.

Now I’m gonna pay $200 instead of $800.

And the reason why goes back to this whole concept in insurance of we’re stronger together.

And so the provider network or the dentists who participate with this dental insurance have negotiated rates.

So we’re paying $200 instead of $800.

So if you go side by side for the family of four that doesn’t have insurance and it does have insurance, we’re talking about a difference of $800.

So it really does pay to have insurance.

So you may be thinking, Susan, okay great, I’ve got a really simple solution for you. I’m looking at those costs for preventive visits and just don’t go to the dentist.

That is a terrible idea. We do not recommend it. I would absolutely say you wanna be doing your preventive care.

In fact, over 2 million people nationwide across this country, end up in the emergency room for oral health issues that could have been found and often prevented just by going to your twice a year cleanings.

If you think about really the power of what dental providers are able to do, they are trained to find 120 signs and symptoms of non-oral health related diseases.

So I have a personal story. I have a family member who was in for his regular cleaning, and the dentist actually found signs of cancer and they were able to get him in so that he could deal with that very quickly.

And if he would’ve waited for other things to show up, I think the outcome could have been really different.

So I am a big, big proponent of getting in to see your dentist for your preventive care.

So you may be finishing your internship and you know, getting your first official job offer. And typically the first thing that people will do is they’ll look at, you know, what’s my hourly rate? What’s my salary? And they just wanna think about what they’re getting paid.

I think it’s really important to understand your total compensation package.

When I say total compensation, you may be wondering what you know, what is there beyond that paycheck? Well, there’s a lot that goes into it. Some examples would be medical insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance. You have a pet named Fido, you might be getting pet insurance for Fido.

But the important thing is that you’re really understanding what all are you getting for the work that you’re doing.

Here’s what I’m gonna tell you. The really simple one thing you need to walk away with is when you’re looking at that offer, I want you to think about it from the macro total compensation perspective.

And I want you to set an appointment to talk with your HR or benefits person. Walk through all of those different parts and pieces, understand what you currently have and what you anticipate using, and then what that coverage looks like.

Those will help you really elect things that make sense for you and your life situation and will maximize the investment that you’ve made in your career and what you’re really walking away with for the work that you’re doing.

And please don’t forget how important oral health is in its connection to your overall health.

Thank you.

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