What I wouldn't give to have good pediatric and dental care for the kids within walking distance.
Yes, that is nice.. however, the flip side of it that there is no one anywhere near us (or anywhere far from us either that we are aware of) that is on an HMO plan. My husband's employer does not have Delta (grrrrr...) because they are too cheap to take on any potential pay-in if there were a lot of high expenses in a particular year. So they offer guardian, which is a joke. We declined it, and for a year self paid California Dental Network. That was a joke too. So now we have no dental insurance, and my husband and daughter going for that visit cost nearly $600!!! So for next year we might accept the dental PPO at my husband's work, which we always felt was insane, but may be reasonable compared to paying cash...and then we are covered in case there is something beyond the regular cleanings, etc. too.
It's frustrating.... but the HMO dentists seem really just to b insurance farms. You can't even get them to actually sit there and clean your teeth. They just want to do the xrays (every visit!! my old dentists only did them every 2 years!), since that's the high-profit item, and get you in and out as quickly as possible. Ugh... I had to make the dentist come back and scrape my teeth because I could still feel the tartar after he poked at like three of them.
Nicki