Benefit-to-cost ratio of dental insurance plans for children in India. A comparative evaluation

BACKGROUND: India is the most populous country in the world now with about one-third of the population being children. Preventive dental checkup and treatment is as important as periodic General Health examination and preventive measures such as timely vaccination have been incorporated in Public health policies for new-borns and young children. Dental checkup and examination as part of public health presents a different scenario wherein most children are not presented even for the first dental checkup before any "problem" or "pain" arises. One major cause of this could be high out of pocket expenses that parents may have to bear. While multiple government schemes for General health examination and treatment exist, It is still not clear about their effectiveness at the level of an individual patient. At present, there seems to be a lack of a dedicated scheme for children's oral health. Hence, the only other avenue for parents to seek dental attention for their wards would be the health insurance sector. AIM: The aim is to highlight the benefit to cost ratio of existing health insurances for dental treatment and to explore if any insurance offers best features for pediatric dental treatment. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We studied and compared various health insurances existing in the market currently and tried to find out if any dental benefits of such insurances exist on the basis of Benefit to cost ratio (BCR). RESULTS: After comparison, we did not find any health insurance plan that covers oral health for children effectively. CONCLUSION: With BCR offered by insurance companies which was found to be far less than recommended, it makes little sense for parents to seek dental insurance for their wards currently.