Unconnected thoughts about benefits

There was an article on Bloomberg last week about how progressive Wall St was being about recruiting from the LGBT community.  Which is swell.  But I guarantee you, somewhere there is a consultant or flock thereof circulating with a deck of slides demonstrating that the queer community is a cheaper set of employees, that they are statistically significantly less likely to grow their households and acquire dependents for whom large employers must provide health insurance, etc.

-----

In general, people significantly over value dental benefits.  After basic health insurance, dental insurance is one of the things that employees value most, but policies are designed so that it's difficult to get your money's worth, and benefits are capped. My family and I are big dental users, and last year (when we were paying our own premiums, admittedly) we didn't come close to getting our money's worth.  Our premiums were in the neighborhood of $2400 and we got maybe $1600 of benefit out of it, and the most we could possibly have gotten was $4k.

Now, most people don't buy on the individual market, so they don't see the full cost of dental insurance come out of their own pockets.  Since their employer pays maybe 50, 60, 75%, it seems like a cheap benefit.  But every dollar an employer spends on dental is not spent on something else:  a better basic health policy, group life, disability, a better 401k match, a bonus, something.

In general, your spending $2k for something that -- if you brush and floss -- you have odds of 1 in 20 of some sort of bad event that might get you $4k.  Even if you don't take care of yourself, your odds are low that you'll get your money's worth.

By contrast, people dramatically undervalue disability.  There, a small outlay could cover you for a 1 in 50 chance of a significant income disruption $50-$100k and up.

I think the issue is that tooth pain is very "top of mind" because your teeth are right there next to your brain, and if they hurt, you're hurting all the time.  They are also right there in the middle of your face, so if they look bad, you look bad, and you feel badly about yourself. 

This is why dental insurance is such a fine business.  It's like shooting fish in a barrel.