Broken crown

I broke a crown while on vacation. Thankfully it didn’t hurt and wasn’t painful afterwards. That pain came later. We returned from Mexico 1 day before the winter storm Penelope making it difficult to travel for a period of time. I was able to get into the dentist today. I thought I broke a tooth of lost a filling but that’s not what happened. Instead I broke a crown. How does that happen? Crowns are supposed to last between 5 and 15 years. As it turns out the company that provides crowns to my dentist only offers a 1 year warranty. According to my research the average is 5 to 10 years. The cumulative survival rates for all single crowns were 89.9% and 80.9% after 5 and 10 years, respectively. After 15 and 20 years of function, the cumulative survival rates for 284 and 111 single crowns were 70.5% and 61.8%, respectively. This failure is unusual.

I was quoted a price of $642 with $296 of the total to be covered by my dental insurance. That is until I asked about the warranty. The gal went back to look into the matter and returned to let me know that my insurance company only covers a crown once out of every 5 years on a given tooth. This means that I wasn’t going to be covered. WTF? The office offered to compensate me for that portion as a gesture of good will. I took the offer.

This is a good example of an unplanned expense. While not a crazy amount of money, it still could be a hurdle for someone on a tight budget. Its important to have the means to cover an unplanned expense. I will be using my HSA to fund this one.