Let me ask you this: is your opinion of dental insurance in any way related to your age and lifestyle? You have a strong opinion but, from an outsider, it seems that this is one of those, "This works for me therefore it must work for everyone" cases.You're wearing your "voice of reason" face, without actually adding anything to the conversation. I believe I've made my position pretty clear about why insurance for trivial expenses is a bad investment. But I guess we'll go over it some more.
From seeing my own grandparents and parents expenses, I'd guesstimate most elderly spend upwards of $10-$30k on dental work from 60-80.
That's not even plausible for "most elderly". My dad has always had serious dental issues, and is in his sixties now (as is my mom, though her dental issues didn't start as early as my dad's and have never been as serious). Combined they spend less than $10k per year on dental care, without dental insurance.
Anyway, my position is, and will not change with age, that insurance should be for catastrophic events, not day-to-day expenses. Insurance is designed to pay for the occasional rather than the regular. Insurance is not designed to save you money...it is designed to help you get over the major bumps in expenditures that come up every now and then, by surprise. Dental care is, generally, a regular, mostly predictable, expense.
Do you believe insurance companies are doing what they do at a loss? Are they giving everyone more than they pay for? If not, it's unwise to pay them for things you can pay for out of pocket, because in the long run, the insurance company always makes money. Buying insurance is like gambling. When it's something like health care, which can explode into hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of expenses, you must accept the bet; otherwise you're risking your health and risking bankruptcy. When it's something like dental care, which can never be more than a few thousand dollars (cosmetic dentistry can add up to more, but that's never covered anyway), unless you expect to be the very expensive outlier, it's a poor investment.
If you like making poor investments, or if you are the outlier that requires frequent and expensive dental care, then you should get dental insurance. Otherwise, you're paying for both your dental care, and the profit margin of your insurance company (and probably for some of the outliers that require a lot of care, since insurance distributes cost, as well).
