Here are some things you don’t know about dental care…and if you don’t know these things, your employees don’t either:

• Your dental benefit likely 100% covers 2 cleanings a year. Yet maybe a quarter of people should get 2 cleanings a year. The rest should get either 1 or 3 (or 4). The latter group includes many diabetics (though almost no diabetes program mentions this, of course because they get measured on blood sugar, not the number of pieces of intelligent advice they give), smokers, mouth-breathers and people with a lot of dental work. The extra preventive visits aren’t covered. And yet this exact same latter group is the one that is going to cause you problems. This is probably the only instance in which preventive care saves money. But it’s probably the only instance in which preventive care isn’t covered.
• Americans get way too many wisdom teeth extracted.  No surprise, since these extractions are very profitable.
• Probably 2/3 of cavities can be fixed without drilling, filling, needles or high expense. But your dentist isn’t going to tell you about this “new” (used elsewhere in the world for more than half a century) treatment because they make so little money treating cavities this way. (Translation: your employees don’t pay much.)

Of course, most wellness programs address these issues through employee education. (Not!) Actually Quizzify is the only vendor that does, as far as we know. Here are a few words on this subject.

Meanwhile, the rest of you can read this great article in Employee Benefit Adviser on how to, uh, extract maximum value from your dental benefit.