conversation: User (ThatPianoKid): "I am trying to get my teeth removed because I just saw the dentist and they told me the wisdom teeth need to be removed. I called the surgeon and got a referral from my dentist, but the surgeons office wont accept me without a referral from my primary care physician. I just saw my primary care physician in May, and it costs $25 just to see them for 5 minutes for them to tell me I can have a referral. It makes no sense because they have nothing to do with my teeth. I just went to the dermatologist for something else twice, and payed both times for those co pays and these 5 minute appointments for referrals just dont seem right. Is there a way I can bypass this?"
  Self: "Try calling a different surgeon? If they have a referral from the dentist I don't understand why they'd need one from a primary care physician. "
  User (ThatPianoKid): "I'm going to call another surgeon next town over whos still in my network, but I dont get it either."
  Yet_Another_Hero (Yet_Another_Hero): "Look at the other reply, basically you are being told to do all these things so that your medical insurance, not your dental insurance, pays for the surgery.\n\nWisdom teeth removal is a lot different from getting a tooth pulled. If you go through your dental insurance, you'll hit a cap on coverage and pay all of the rest out of pocket. If you successfully go through medical, it counts towards your deductible and max out of pocket, which means there's a hard limit to the total amount of money you have to pay for all of this.\n\nReferrals are needed to get the medical insurance to agree to cover the surgery."
  User (ThatPianoKid): "I see. When you put it that way I understand. "
  dualsplit (dualsplit): "If you have a good relationship with your PCP’s Office they may just write the referral based on your referral from the dentist. But things like that are much harder to come by as health systems consolidate and become less personal. I grew up with HMO insurance. But we were still able to just see our solo MD and he’d write referrals. Then I became a nurse and could take advantage of some “professional courtesy” from providers. But, overall, having medical cover the extraction is way better than having dental do it, unless you gave a super duper dental policy. "
  User (ThatPianoKid): "My office sucks. Doctors are leaving all the time so for the last couple visits Ive had a different doctor assigned to me..."
  