How one biscuit caused an $1800 dental bill, but extras costs more

BITING off more than you can chew can be bad for your teeth and your household health bills, but is extras insurance worth the cost?

A SMALL piece of my tooth broke off the other day, and it’s going to cause financial pain for several months.

While I’d like to say I was biting into a juicy, healthy apple when it happened, it was actually an Oreo biscuit, sneakily stolen from my children’s cupboard stash, that caused the damage.

The tooth damage isn’t too major, but there will be carnage in my bank account — more than $1800 being spent on dental treatment in the coming weeks.

To be fair, the repair job for what will forever be known as “the horrific Oreo biscuit incident” costs less than $400, but a combination of me avoiding dentists in recent years and a couple of dodgy 35-year-old fillings in neighbouring teeth has bumped up the cost towards $2000.

And the best part is — wait for it — I don’t have extras insurance! I cancelled extras a couple of years ago after becoming annoyed that it left us paying 80 per cent of the cost of expensive orthodontics.

SAVING: How to get cheaper private health insurance

So is this Murphy’s Law striking back, or a case of being run down by the karma bus?

It’s actually none of the above, because despite the Oreo biscuit disaster, extras is still not worth it. There are just too many rules, annual limits and lifetime limits.

Regular users who maximise the optical, physio, chiro and dental benefits might do well out of extras, but many won’t.

One biscuit can be an expensive financial lesson, but also prompt you to save money.

Being a numbers nerd, I crunched the numbers on several extras policies, and discovered that even with cover costing $120-$140 a month you still have to plug plenty of gaps.

For example:

• A health fund might give you $33 for a comprehensive oral exam but a survey of dentists last year by consumer group Choice found they cost $66 on average, while a scale and clean has a similar 50 per cent gap;

• There are big gaps in what you pay and what you get for major dental such as crowns, and often annual limits around $700 per person;

• Orthodontics remains a financial black hole, with health funds imposing annual limits of $500-$750 a year and lifetime limits below $2200 for work that costs $10,000-plus.

• Physio, optical and chiro usually have limits per visit (less than $40) and per year (less than $750), so heavy users get stung.

I worked out that if I had extras cover, my dental treatment following the horrific Oreo biscuit incident would still involve about $1000 of out-of-pocket expenses.

Some people think you need extras insurance to avoid hefty government tax penalties for not having private health cover, but the rules state you only need private hospital cover.

If you have extras, ask your health fund for an annual claims statement so you can work out whether it’s worth it.

If makes financial sense, that’s great, and you can ignore the suggestions of a tooth-breaking, biscuit-stealing extras sceptic who bit off more than he could chew. If it doesn’t, give yourself a handy financial bonus by ditching extras.

@keanemoney