Fortis Benefits Insurance Co. has begun offering an expanded array of dental benefit products designed to allow consumers to choose a plan that fits their dental care program needs.
Jim Gimarelli, D.M.D., a dentist and Fortis Benefits' vice president of dental products, said the wide variety of dental insurance products is attractive to brokers, employers and employees.
"With so many options, employers and employees can find ways to achieve affordable dental insurance tailored to their needs, which is critical at a time when medical costs are skyrocketing," Gimarelli said. "Our multi-tiered program is a very viable way of offering employees dental services at a reasonable price." There is growing demand among employees for dental coverage, Gimarelli added. According to LIMRA International, more than 50 percent of employees without dental insurance rank it as the second most desired benefit, behind general health care coverage.
"Employees place a high value on dental coverage," Gimarelli said. "Fortis Benefits is poised to be a leader in the industry by being a partner with employers to provide benefits that workers want, and our new array of plans creates options that work for companies of any size and employees at all levels."
Although dental coverage is highly desired, many Americans live without it. According to "Oral Health in America: A Report of the Surgeon General," released in May 2000, more than 108 million children and adults lacked dental insurance at the time of the study's release. That was more than 2.5 times the number who lacked medical insurance.
"Recently, research findings have pointed to possible associations between chronic oral infections and diabetes, heart and lung diseases, stroke, and low-birth-weight and premature births," then-Surgeon General David Satcher M.D., Ph.D. wrote in a preface to the report.
The report added that expenditures for dental services made up 4.7 percent of the nation's health expenditures in 1998 -- $53.8 billion out of $1.1 trillion.
