It pays to shop around for dental care if you are among the thousands of Treasure Valley residents who lack dental insurance or are trying to stretch benefits.

Take Boisean Lance Anderson and his teenage son. For them, taking time to get a second opinion from a mostly cash-only dentist paid handsomely.

“The bottom line was I paid for ... one cavity getting fixed, and it cost me $107, not the $1,218 (the first dentist) was ready to charge.”
Anderson’s case illustrates a trend in dental care, said Quinn Dufurrena, executive director of the Idaho State Dental Association. Just as in other health care fields, it is getting more expensive, partly because some dentists are emerging from training $250,000 or more in debt, he said.

But a small but growing number of dentists are choosing not to deal with insurance companies, Dufurrena said. How many is uncertain. The policy cuts down on paperwork and the cost of doing business. That, in turn, means patients pay less.

Sometimes, second opinions yield less-expensive options  and sometimes they don’t. Some dental conditions are obvious, and second, third or fourth opinions would turn up the same results, Dufurrena said.

But some dental work is a judgment call. For example, dentists may differ over whether small cavities need to be filled, Dufurrena said.
The first dentist to whom Anderson took his son examined the boy and took X-rays, at a cost of $207, and then handed Anderson an estimate for $1,218 to fill seven cavities, said Anderson, who had paperwork to back up his tale.

Until recently, paying for dental visits was no big problem for Anderson because his son had dental coverage. But the coverage stopped because of  family circumstances, and the search for another opinion became more pressing.

That second opinion came from Rodney Brady, a no-frills dentist at Basic Dental in Meridian.

Brady said he sometimes has a different treatment philosophy than other dentists. He says he is more conservative, and some
dentists are more  aggressive.

Brady’s Basic Dental practice is the definition of basic. There are no flat-screen TVs on the ceilings in exam rooms, and the work is no-frills — very little cosmetic dentistry, for example. Most patients lack dental insurance. “Our patients just want to get their teeth fixed so they can eat,” Brady said.

Brady’s been operating his practice this way for about five years, since he returned from a mission providing dental care on the South Pacific island of Tonga. There are people in Ada County who need dental care as much as the Tongans, he said.

The bottom line is patients need to find a dentist who matches their own treatment philosophy. 

“You need to find a dentist that you trust and one that will take the time to show you the X-rays,” Dufurrena said.