Dental
You have two dental options: Basic and Comprehensive.
What You Need to Know
- Both plans cover basic care at 85% and major care at 50%
- Both are administrated by United Concordia
- Covered dental expenses must be performed by a licensed dentist (or for some services such as cleanings, performed by a licensed dental hygienist supervised by a dentist)
- The deductibles, coinsurance for oral surgery, orthodontia coverage, and annual maximum are different in both plans
- Orthodontia and dental implants are covered only in the Comprehensive plan
- You may now enroll in dental coverage every year
What's Covered
To encourage good dental health, the plans pay a higher benefit for preventive and diagnostic care, and a lower benefit for restorative services.
Following are brief descriptions of covered services in each category.
- Preventive and Diagnostic Care - Routine exams, cleanings, and bitewing X-rays twice per year; full-mouth X-rays once every three years; surface fluoride treatment.
- Basic Restorative Services - Fillings and extractions; root canal therapy; periodontal care (treatment of gum and tissue disease); inlays, onlays, gold fillings, and crown restoration.
- Major Restorative Services - Dental implants; full or partial removable dentures; fixed bridgework; repair/replacement of dentures/bridgework.
- Oral Surgery - Surgical removal of impacted teeth; dental root resection.
Using Your Dental Benefits
Your Dental Options (chart)
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Refunds for dental claim overpayments
If you or a covered dependent used a non-participating dentist in the last several years, you may receive a check because you overpaid for those services.
Alcoa and our dental claims administrator, United Concordia (UCCI), are sending the checks to compensate employees for the overpayment caused by this error.
What happened
UCCI pays dentists who do not participate in their network a set amount for each service they perform. Due to an oversight, those amounts were not updated in UCCI’s system to cover annual increases in dental costs from January 1, 2002 through May 6, 2009. Since you pay the difference between UCCI’s set fee and the full cost of the service if you use one of these dentists, you overpaid for some dental services.
How it’s being corrected
Alcoa asked UCCI to go through their records and retroactively apply the correct allowances to all claims for non-participating dentists during that time period. Then, they determined for each claim what the employee overpaid by calculating the difference between what the employee paid the dentist and what the employee would have paid if the amounts had been updated.
For example, if you paid a non-participating dentist $50 for a filling and you would have paid $30 if the dentist had received the updated amount from UCCI, you paid $20 more than you should have.
Employees, former employees, and retirees will receive a refund in the amount of that difference, plus interest that was calculated using the Internal Revenue Service’s annual mid-term rate for each year. One check will be issued by UCCI for all claims by you and your dependents during that time period. The check will be made out and mailed to the employee.
Checks will be processed and mailed beginning in March. It may take up to six months for all the checks to be processed and mailed. Watch your mail for an envelope from United Concordia.
If you have questions
Call UCCI at 1-800-433-9906.
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