...however, I wanted to explain the $4000 price tag of the dental implant since so many people have contacted me saying they thought that was too high.
I do have other options, like a bridge or a big gaping hole. However, the cost for the bridge is very similar and the "life expectancy" is much shorter. Also, because we plan to live in Haiti in the near future, we won't have access to a whole lot of dental care, and the percentage of failure of bridges is higher than the percentage of failure of implants. The big gaping hole option is not appealing to me because I am far too vain. This is the most permanent option that will hopefully mean once it's done we don't have to mess with it again.
The $4000 price tag is for the whole deal-- not just the implant. It includes the extraction of the old broken tooth, an apparatus that I wear during the nearly year long process so I don't appear toothless, the bone grafting (necessary to fortify the bone for the implant), the surgery to implant the screw, and the crown on top of it all. The whole process takes almost a year. And since things are done at different times, it's not like we have to pay the whole amount at once. There's a fee for each step. (I hope that makes sense.) It still stinks though.
We have very lousy dental insurance-- it won't cover this at all because we have the "low option coverage." (which I am learning is basically useless since we pay a lot for it each month and we get almost nothing covered.)
