Dental Work/Actiq

Does anyone here know about medical insurance covering extensive dental work?

My oral surgeon said that sometimes when gum issues are caused by medical treatments, they have seen medical insurers cover part of the work. I will be working with my PCP to look into this, but if anyone has any personal experience or knows about any articles/websites that address this, I'd really appreciate input.

I'm definitely looking forward to the day when Fentora goes generic. If I could afford an alternative delivery system, I'd have switched already.

Thanks so much for any input you all have.

For clarification: I should have said "oral surgery", as that is what this is. It is above & beyond what my dentist would or could do other than the one crown that my dentist will need to make after the oral surgeon does his work. I need to have a dental implant at one site (extraction, bone grafting, implant screw) because there is an infection around the root (apex) of the tooth. I need to have gum grafting at 2 other sites in order to prevent similar infections from forming. My dentist said that I have excellent oral hygiene &, on top of that, I never had a single cavity until into my 30's (after using Actiq). My PM and my current & former dentists have clearly documented (as has Cephalon) that the damage to the bone & tissues only has occurred at the areas where I am "applying" the medication. Those areas were the first ones to show any damage to the teeth & have the most extensive damage in general. We have tried every single other narcotic & non-narcotic pain reliever on the market and, sadly, Actiq (and the other, more expensive IR formulations) is the only medication that I tolerate that helps (there were a couple non-narcotics that didn't hurt, but didn't help either). Unfortunately, in spite progressively more aggressive dental treatments (which seem to be helping significantly reduce further damage -- they just weren't available to me until 6 months ago), I have a LOT of damage to the tissues in my mouth & some damage to the bone due to a spreading infection.

I know that the crown would clearly not be covered by my medical insurance, but I'm hoping maybe the oral surgeon's work to remove the infection (extraction, bone graft & screw implant), and to perform tissue grafting surgery on 2 other areas to prevent similar (likely) infections from forming around the tooth-to-jaw connections like what happened with the 1st tooth would be covered by my medical policy. The one bit of good news in all of this is that I have top-notch medical insurance so if there's a chance that medical plans might cover this kind of work, mine probably would.

I have not seen any instances where the implant or any of its parts are covered and with the grafting being necessary from directly being related to the use of narcotics they're likely to say no in a big way. Regardless of how far or how little we have come in the world of Cp insurance companies that don't care enough to pay for the medication isn't likely to cover damage caused by that medication.

Good luck on getting the insurance to pay for this stuff. I will be surprised if they do. I do know several years back the private insurance paid for my niece to have her wisdom teeth taken out by an oral surgeon. It was done in a hospital setting too. A lot of it is the coding used to bill insurance.

Take care.