Let The Buyer Beware

Caveat emptor, Latin for “let the buyer beware,” is an apt expression for how I am now left feeling about Kaiser Permanente and the services they provide. While I am generally satisfied with Kaiser, there are the occasional, if not rare and glaring exception. I would like to express to people, especially when it comes to dental work, the absolute necessity for obtaining in print, the actual cost estimates of a procedure prior to having it performed. I went to Kaiser Dental to have a single procedure performed. I had sufficient benefits to cover the cost of this one procedure. However, I was led to believe that not only would the procedure that I wanted to have performed be covered by the egis of my befits, but so would other elective dentist recommended procedures. Ergo, I allowed these elective procedures to be scheduled and performed all the while being led to believe that the cost for them as well as for the one major procedure I needed to have done would be covered.. But when it came time to have the singular procedure for which I had initially sought dentistry for, performed, low and behold my benefits had been consumed by these other elective procedures, thereby leaving me with the out of pocket expense for the one procedure that was of absolute paramount importance to me. The old bait and switch. I firmly believe that I was intentionally misled into using up my benefits on elective procedures that had the actual cost for such been disclosed, would have prompted me to forgo in favor of having the major, more costly and much more needed procedure performed. I did not anticipate, nor was I led to believe that I would need to suspect that the fees for these procedures would expend my available benefits prior to the one procedure that was the reason for my initial seeking of dentistry in the first place. Had Kaiser been forthright and up front about their fees and costs, I would have insisted upon having my priorities met first and foremost. However since I was led to believe that all procedures would be covered under the auspices of my benefits, I had no expectation to doubt otherwise. Hence Caveat emptor.