It is extremely important for you to realize that discount dental plans are in no way actual insurance plans. While dental insurance may pay only a portion of your costs for various major or minor or procedures, a discount dental plan will already have given you a list of your agreed upon discounts for a particular procedure. For example, let's assume that your dentist would ordinarily charge an uninsured patient $60 for a cleaning and X-rays. With a discount dental plan that $60 may be discounted 60%, and you would only pay $24.00.

Discount dental plans work this way: You will receive 15% or up to 80% discount on the majority of procedures; you will be given an extensive list of providers to choose from; the plan will activate immediately upon registration; you will not have to fill out extensive paperwork; even dental specialists will be available; there will be no age nor health restrictions; and finally you will know exactly what a procedure will cost you ahead of time so that you can make informed decisions on any procedures.

These dental plans also do not have any annual limits, nor do they carry any deductibles. Instead, you pay a low membership fee per month and when you need dental services, you must go to a participating dentist, present your discount card and instead of paying what an uninsured client would pay, you will receive a discount commensurate to whatever the plan you joined promised you for whatever procedures you received.

Also, these plans do not limit how many visits you may make, whereas most insurance plans do. About the only time that a discount plan will make an exception, is for ongoing orthodontic work. The reason is of that you are already wearing the braces on your teeth and the particular orthodontist may not belong to the discount dental plan you have chosen.

An interesting feature of many discount plans is the fact that when you join you will be guaranteed that the monthly fees necessary to belong to that particular plan are guaranteed not to go up for X amount of time. This guarantee may be for as long as two-years.

Since in office teeth bleaching is now the rage, you may find that there are some discount plans that will even cover that. Tooth bonding will also receive a discount with most plans as well.

Keeping in mind that this is not insurance, you will find that your monthly fee is not a premium per se, but rather will be a membership fee, as it is more of a discount club. As long as you pay your membership fees, you will receive the discounts promised. As a matter of fact, most of discount dental plans even have a money back guarantee, which of course is unheard of when dealing with actual insurance. Probably the biggest benefit of discount dental plans is that you do not have to wait for as long as 6 to 18 months to have a major procedure done.