By Bruce Shutan

While annual dental costs have increased at a lesser pace than medical costs, they still have risen between 5% and 7% over the past five years. As dental is expected to consume a more significant percentage of benefit dollars in the future, it comes as no surprise that many employers — particularly smaller ones — are considering employee-pay-all "voluntary" dental benefit plans to help prepare for these increases and remain competitive.

The small group market historically has had the lowest penetration of dental plan offerings. Roughly half of firms with fewer than 25 lives provide dental coverage compared with more than 90% of larger organizations.

"With voluntary dental plans, more employers are able to provide their employees with access to valuable oral health care," explains Alan Vogel, D.M.D, vice president, MetLife Dental Product Management. MetLife has recently introduced a voluntary dental product for employers with 10 to 500 covered lives.

While a voluntary plan can make dental coverage more accessible and increase benefits appreciation for employees who have never had coverage, it could be perceived as a mixed blessing. For example, employees who once had employer-paid coverage may resent the new funding mechanism.

"A voluntary dental plan can be well received by employees who have not traditionally had access to this benefit," Vogel says. "However, employers that are shifting from a predominantly employer-funded benefit plan to one that is predominately employee-funded need to communicate the plan's value in order to ensure continued employee participation and satisfaction. Voluntary benefits are a cost-effective way for employers to provide employees with an array of benefit options, but employee communication and education is a critical component for success."

Making better choices

A dental plan design should provide appropriate preventive and diagnostic coverage to help avoid the incidence of dental disease. Otherwise, Vogel is concerned about the effect a poorly designed plan may have on employee productivity, lost work time and other factors.

He believes greater emphasis on education by employers ultimately will help employees understand what they're buying and enable them to make better benefit choices based on consumer-driven ideas such as individual need, age and risk rather than simply cost. Indeed, the lowest-priced plans may not be the best ones, depending upon an individual's needs.
"Some people don't understand the services that are elective in dentistry and the services that are truly necessary to treat active disease," Vogel says. In addition, if price only is driving the benefits buying decision, some lower-priced dental plan designs might exclude or limit services that standards of care deem appropriate and should be covered or covered more often.

"MetLife's new Voluntary Dental Benefit Plans for small businesses are designed to provide employees with important preventive and diagnostic care that can contribute to improved oral health — which should be the goal of any well-designed dental plan," Vogel adds. "Equally important is providing employees with the information they need in order to take responsibility for maintaining their oral health and becoming better consumers of dental care."

MetLife's Voluntary Dental Benefit Plans provide employees of both small and large businesses full access to the carrier's national network of nearly 80,000 participating dentist locations, and both employers and employees can take advantage of MetLife's Web-based benefits portals for administering and managing benefits and claims.

Good dental health

The good news is the American Dental Association reports that dental services today are more preventive and diagnostic than restorative.

"There's no question that, in general, Americans are in better oral health today than in previous decades, and many older individuals are keeping their natural teeth longer," says Vogel, who earned his DMD from the University of Pittsburgh School of Dental Medicine and MPH from John Hopkins School of Public Health. "The counterpart is ensuring that access to dental care exists to maintain the health of those teeth."
Employers cannot become complacent about the need to offer these benefits in the absence of a national dental health crisis.
"Research has shown a link between periodontal disease and certain medical problems such as heart disease, diabetes and pre-term, low birth-weight infants — so it is important that oral health be maintained," Vogel explains. "It's a matter of helping people stay healthy, and if they do get sick, providing assistance in treating the disease. It's understandable that employees with dental benefits are more apt to seek dental care than those without them."

For more information about MetLife's dental benefits, visit whymetlife.com/dental

Reproduced compliments of BenefitNews.com. Bruce Shutan, former managing editor of Employee Benefit News, is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles.