You can offer a free-standing dental plan through the SHOP Marketplace 2 ways:

• As part of a coverage offer that includes a health insurance plan
• By itself, without a SHOP Marketplace health plan

In addition, some health insurance plans available in the SHOP Marketplace include dental benefits. If you pick a health plan that includes dental coverage, you don’t need to take any of the actions described below.

Choosing a free-standing dental plan

When you create your coverage offer in the SHOP Marketplace application, you’ll be asked if you want to include dental coverage.

2 dental plan categories: High and Low

The category of dental plan you choose affects how much your employees pay for dental premiums, deductibles and copayments, and the total amount they’d have to spend out-of-pocket for the year.

How the 2 coverage levels pay:

• Low: The dental plan pays about 70% of the total costs of dental care. The employee pays about 30%.
• High: The dental plan pays about 85% of the total costs of dental care. The employee pays about 15%.

Employee choice of dental plans

You can choose to offer one dental plan to your employees, or you can select a plan category — Low or High — and let your employees choose any dental plan available in that category.

Paying part of your employees’ dental premium

As with health plans, you can choose how much of an employee’s dental premium you pay. You don’t have to pay any of it.

If you offer your employees a choice of dental plans, your contribution will be applied to the cost of whatever dental plan the employee picks.

Questions?

• See all SHOP Marketplace tools, calculators, fact sheets, how-to guides, videos, and other resources for employers.
• Contact the SHOP Call Center at 1-800-706-7893 (TTY: 711) weekdays from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. ET. Agents and brokers selling SHOP insurance can use this number too.
• Register for a U.S. Small Business Administration “Affordable Care Act 101” webinar.

More Answers: SHOP Marketplace dental coverage