We hope you enjoy our “state of the art” dental office and look forward to giving you a tour of our treatment facility, here in Thousand Oaks, California where you will have access to the latest available dental treatments, education and information. Please feel free to make an online appointment and view some of our frequently asked questions.

We all know there are distinct differences between the way “traditional dental insurance plans” and “discount dental plans” work. The savings with the “traditional dental insurance plans” and the “discount dental plans” can be a 30% difference in favor of the dental plans. Dental insurance is utilized by large groups and businesses to cover their employees’ dental care, often leaving the small business owner and their employees out in the cold. Dental insurance requires paying high monthly premiums along with a deductible for defined coverage and let’s not forget the co-pay. With a Dental Plan there is no defined coverage; the annual coverage is usually lower than the deductible for two family members, a higher discount than insurance, and no co-pay. Traditional insurance commonly leaves out individuals and small business employers, causing them to have the inability to provide dental insurance for themselves, their own families, employees, and their families. The unwillingness of the traditional insurance companies to provide dental insurance stems from the fact that they can’t make enough money off of them to be worth their while. The dental insurance includes spending maximums, deductibles, waiting periods for certain procedures, limitations, no pre-existing, and exclusions on care, taking away the ability of the provider to have patient care in the forefront. The tedious claims forms to fill out and submit sometimes causes the Doctors to drop the insurance company. What dental insurance usually covers is the cost of preventive services after deductibles are met and your annual deductibles will vary from $25 to $50 per covered individual, depending on the policy. The cost of deductibles and co-pays should be considered when calculating the overall costs associated with dental insurance. While you are able to use any dentist with traditional insurance, if you can get an appointment, the monthly premiums for dental insurance can be well over $100 per month for family plans, $30 per month for individuals or more.

Discount dental plans, on the other hand, provide the millions of Americans that do not receive dental benefits through their work or business the Dental Coverage they need. The higher reduced savings percentage rate of Discount Dental Plans are designed to provide consumers access to dental networks that traditional insurance cannot compete with. Discount Dental Plans are the most widely available dental programs for individuals or families, and the annual costs are about what the deductible is for your dental insurance for two family members. The Discount Dental Plans are very affordable to join and do not require contracts to sign. The Consumer Driven Need for these plans provides consumers with real and substantial savings on most dental procedures. These membership-based programs provide coverage on an annual basis at considerable savings. The membership fee is in exchange for secured discounts on most dental services, such as dental exams, routine cleanings, fillings, extractions, root canals, dentures, crowns, and braces. The plans typically save our members 25% to 80% on most dental procedures when visiting a participating network provider. The provided “fee schedule” with the Dental Plan is listed in the membership materials to ensure that consumers will receive their promised savings. The contracts with the providers in the network prevent them from raising prices to compensate for the discounts the members are entitled to.

It essentially breaks down to this: with up to 50% savings, for $360 a year plus co-pays, you as an individual can have “traditional dental insurance.” If you are a family of four it breaks down to this: for $1,440.00 plus co-pays, you can have “traditional insurance.” Now let’s look at the “Dental Plan” costs. With up to 80% savings, for $180.00 a year, you as an individual can have an open “Dental Plan,” with no co-pay. The average family “Dental Plan” will costs a family of any size $240.00 a year as opposed to $1,440.00 with a co-pay and a cap limit.

The differences between “traditional dental insurance plans” and “discount dental plans” are in the favor of the consumer. In certain situations, to maximize savings, they can also be used together. You will find that the Discount Dental Card can be used as a stand-alone. You can visit our website to look for group dental insurance via your business or employer, look in the Group Dental Plans section. As an employer, when you sign up five or more employees under the group plan, it is pre-tax and payroll deductible. If you are an individual or family looking to save money with a Discount Dental Plan, please use our website to find providers within our network available in your area.

But instead of avoiding your dentist entirely, do yourself a favor and keep up with your regular preventive care. As in so many things, you’ll save yourself pain and expense if you prevent dental problems from occurring in the first place, experts say.

What that means: Get your teeth cleaned regularly, usually every six months, although people with gum disease may need more frequent attention. Keep up on your X-rays as well; a full set typically needs to be made only once every three to five years, so you may be able to slide for a while on that. But you should get less comprehensive “bitewing” X-rays more frequently, on whatever schedule your dentist recommends.

As for that thousand-dollar crown that you need, your dentist may be able to stabilize your tooth so you can delay the work temporarily, says Matthew Messina, a Cleveland dentist who is a consumer adviser for the American Dental Association. That may buy you a few months to hoard some cash or hold you over into next year so you can stash the money in a flexible spending account and pay for it on a pretax basis. But it’s a stopgap measure only; you still need to get the work done.

Unfortunately, there are no stopgaps when it comes to dealing with tooth decay or infection. If you’ve got cavities, get them fixed now or risk injuring the nerve of the tooth. That could force you to get a root canal or an extraction down the road.

Messina allows that patient procrastination is one of the “challenges” of dentistry. No matter how unwelcome those checkup reminder cards may be—and no matter how unwanted the bite out of your wallet—make the appointment. “By the time something hurts, it’s usually far more severe than it would have been had we addressed it earlier,” says Messina.

For more on advice on keeping down dental expenses, see “Taking the Bite Out of the Cost of Dental Work,” part of U.S. News’s 2008 guide to a healthy smile.

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June 28, 2007
Wider Sale Seen for Toothpaste Tainted in China
By WALT BOGDANICH

After federal health officials discovered last month that tainted Chinese toothpaste had entered the United States, they warned that it would most likely be found in discount stores.

In fact, the toothpaste has been distributed much more widely. Roughly 900,000 tubes containing a poison used in some antifreeze products have turned up in hospitals for the mentally ill, prisons, juvenile detention centers and even some hospitals serving the general population.

The toothpaste was handed out in dozens of state institutions, mostly in Georgia but also in North Carolina, according to state officials. Hospitals in South Carolina and Florida also reported receiving Chinese-made toothpaste, and a major national pharmaceutical distributor said it was recalling tainted Chinese toothpaste.

The Food and Drug Administration has advised consumers to discard all Chinese-made toothpaste, regardless of the brand.

State officials in Georgia and North Carolina said all the tainted tubes were being replaced with brands made outside China. The officials said there had been no reports of illnesses caused by the toothpaste.

Officials of the Food and Drug Administration said toothpaste with even small amounts of the bad ingredient, diethylene glycol, a syrupy poison, had a “low but meaningful risk of toxicity and injury” for children and people with kidney or liver disease.

“This stuff does not belong in toothpaste, period,” a spokesman for the drug agency, Doug Arbesfeld, said. “No Chinese toothpaste has come into the country since the end of May.”

Since the Panamanian government found Chinese toothpaste with diethylene glycol in May, countries from Latin America to West Africa to Japan have seized the toothpaste.

Panama last year inadvertently mixed the poison made in China into 260,000 bottles of cold medicine, killing at least 100 people, prosecutors there said.

Diethylene glycol is often used in Chinese toothpaste in place of its more expensive chemical cousin glycerin. Chinese regulators have said that toothpaste with small amounts of diethylene glycol is not harmful and that international concern is unjustified.

After the drug agency expressed concern about tainted toothpaste, the Georgia Department of Administrative Services checked to see whether Chinese toothpaste was being used by the state. The department found it in 83 prisons, 4 mental health centers and 4 juvenile detention centers, said Rick Beal, contracts manager for the department.

Mr. Beal said officials confiscated 5,877 remaining cases, each with 144 tubes, of the Springfresh brand. Tests showed the toothpaste had a diethylene glycol concentration of about 5 percent, he said.

The state bought the toothpaste for about 9 cents a tube in 2002. Mr. Beal said he did not know how many tubes had been used.

There are no reports of harm resulting from the toothpaste, bought from a distributor, American Amenities in Seattle.

“We do not know who their manufacturer from China was,” Mr. Beal said.

A lawyer for American Amenities, Jesse Lyon, said it had recalled all suspect shipments of the product and had decided to stop importing Chinese toothpaste. Mr. Lyon said he believed that American Amenities had about 30 institutional customers, with Georgia being the largest.

A spokesman for the North Carolina Department of Corrections, George Dudley, said his agency estimated that it bought 22,000 tubes of Pacific brand Chinese toothpaste with a small amount of diethylene glycol from Pacific Care Products in San Francisco.

Pacific Care did not respond to a request for comment, but an executive wrote to North Carolina officials that the toothpaste came from Amercare Products, also in Seattle. A spokeswoman for Amercare declined to comment.

Chinese toothpaste containing “trace amounts” of diethylene glycol has also been recalled from healthcare institutions by McKesson, a major pharmaceutical distributor and health services company, said a spokesman, James Larkin.

Mr. Larkin said although this particular brand, McKesson EverFRESH, was not on the drug agency’s list of contaminated toothpaste, McKesson asked a laboratory to test it. When small amounts of diethylene glycol turned up, the company recalled the product, he said.

“We went back through our records, and every customer that ever bought the product was contacted,” Mr. Larkin said.

He added that on short notice he could not determine how many customers had bought the product.

One institution that did was Florida Hospital Waterman, a 200-bed institution in Tavares, Fla.

“We pulled that product,” Bonnie Zimmerman of the hospital said.

Ms. Zimmerman said that the toothpaste that replaced it also came from China and it had “trace amounts” of diethylene glycol. It, too, was removed, she said.

In South Carolina, four hospitals in the Greenville Hospital System also removed Chinese toothpaste, even though its distributor said it did not have diethylene glycol, said John Mateka, executive director of materials management for the group.

The FDA has identified the following brands of toothpaste, typically are sold at low-cost, “bargain” retail outlets. Here is a list:

Manufacturer: Goldcredit International Enterprises LTD Products: (MainStar America, Selective Imports, Donnamax)

* Dr. Cool Coolmint
* Superdent Coolmint
* Cooldent Coolmint
* Cooldent Spearmint
* Cooldent Fluoride Toothpaste
* Everfresh Assortment
* BrightMax
* DentaPro
* Dentakleen
* Dentakleen Junior Brand – Strawberry
* Dentakleen Junior Brand – Blueberry

Manufacturer: Gold Credit International Trading Co LTD Products:

* Bright Max Peppermint Flavor
* Clean Rite Toothpaste
* Clean Rite Toothpaste Kit
* Oralmax Extreme Action Kit
* Oral Bright Fresh Spearmint Flavor
* DentaKleen
* DentaKleen Junior
* DentaPro

Manufacturer: Suzhou City Jinmao Daily Chemicals Co. Ltd.
Product: (Gold City Enterprises/New Star, Miami, FL)

* ShiR Fresh Mint Fluoride Paste
* ShiRFresh Toothpaste
* ShiRFresh Mint
* ShiRFresh Ice Mint

Manufacturer Shanghai Light Industrial Products:
Freshh Spearmint (Following up with Mandalay International, Ogden, UT)

MFR Unknown:
Crescent Toothpaste (Dollar Ocean #4, Wheaton, MD and H&Y Trading Co, Capitol Heights, MD)
Naturabella nino Dusanzo (Certejenas Inc., Cidra, PR)