Health insurance gets all the attention in small business benefits conversations, but dental and vision coverage are often what employees notice first when evaluating a job offer or comparing employers. These coverages are relatively inexpensive for the employer, perceived as highly valuable by employees, and easy to add once a group health relationship is established. For businesses in North Dakota and Minnesota trying to build a competitive benefits package without dramatically increasing costs, dental and vision are frequently the highest-value additions per dollar spent.
What Group Dental Insurance Covers
Group dental insurance is structured in tiers, with different cost-sharing percentages for each tier:
Preventive care (Type I): Annual exams, cleanings, and X-rays. Most group dental plans cover preventive care at 100% — no deductible, no employee cost sharing. Two cleanings per year are standard. This is the most-used portion of the benefit for most employees.
Basic restorative care (Type II): Fillings, simple extractions, and emergency dental treatment. Plans typically cover 70–80% of the cost after the annual deductible is met (usually $50–$150 per person). Employees pay the remaining 20–30%.
Major restorative care (Type III): Crowns, bridges, dentures, and oral surgery. The most expensive category, typically covered at 50% after the deductible. Annual maximums (the most the plan will pay in a year) are usually $1,000–$2,000 per person.
Orthodontia: Many plans include orthodontic coverage, usually at 50% coverage with a lifetime maximum of $1,000–$2,000 per person. Some plans require separate orthodontia elections.
The annual maximum is the most important limitation to understand. Unlike health insurance, which has an out-of-pocket maximum that protects against catastrophic cost, dental plans have annual maximums that cap what the plan pays. An employee who needs significant dental work in a single year may exhaust their annual maximum mid-year and pay 100% of the remaining costs.
What Group Vision Insurance Covers
Vision insurance is typically low-cost and straightforward:
Routine eye exams: Usually one exam per year, covered at 100% in-network. The annual exam is the core benefit.
Eyeglass lenses: Covered once every 12 or 24 months (depending on the plan), with the plan paying a fixed allowance and the employee paying the difference for upgrades (progressive lenses, anti-reflective coating, etc.).
Frames: A fixed allowance ($130–$200 is common) applies toward the frame of the employee's choice. Frames above the allowance are paid by the employee.
Contact lenses: An allowance applies toward contacts (usually $100–$150 per year) in lieu of frames.
Vision plans use a VSP, EyeMed, or similar national network. Employees choosing providers within the network pay significantly less than out-of-network providers. In North Dakota and Minnesota, both VSP and EyeMed have strong coverage in Fargo, Grand Forks, Bismarck, Duluth, and the Twin Cities — and reasonable coverage in smaller markets.
What Employers Actually Pay
Dental and vision coverage are among the most cost-effective benefits available to small business owners:
Dental: Group dental premiums for employer-paid single coverage typically run $25–$55 per employee per month, depending on the plan design and carrier. For an employer who covers 100% of single coverage and 50% of dependent coverage, a 10-person group might pay $300–$550 per month in total dental premiums — $3,600–$6,600 per year.
Vision: Group vision premiums are even more affordable. Single coverage often runs $7–$12 per employee per month, with family coverage at $20–$25 per month. A 10-person group with employer-paid single coverage might pay $70–$120 per month total — under $1,500 per year.
Combined, dental and vision for a 10-person employer group runs roughly $400–$700 per month if the employer covers single coverage fully. On a per-employee basis, that's $40–$70 per month — a fraction of the health insurance spend.
Standalone vs. Bundled Plans
You have two routes for adding dental and vision to your benefits package:
Bundled with health carrier: Many major health carriers — Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota, Sanford Health Plan, Medica, HealthPartners — offer dental and vision as add-ons to your group health plan. The advantage is consolidated billing, simplified administration, and often streamlined enrollment since it's all through one carrier relationship.
Standalone dental and vision carriers: Dedicated dental (Delta Dental, Ameritas, Guardian) and vision (VSP, EyeMed, MetLife Vision) carriers often have broader networks and more specialized plan designs than bundled add-ons. Shopping standalone carriers separately sometimes yields better coverage or lower cost than taking the bundled option from your health carrier.
The right approach depends on your priorities. If simplicity is paramount, bundled makes sense. If you want the best available dental network for your geography or specific plan design flexibility, standalone is worth exploring.
Offering Dental and Vision on a Tight Budget
You don't have to pay for dental and vision as an employer contribution to offer them as benefits. Voluntary dental and vision plans allow employees to access group rates and pay 100% of the premium through payroll deductions, with the employer paying nothing.
For employees, the value is still real: they get group rates (typically lower than individual market dental/vision plans) and pre-tax payroll deductions (reducing their effective cost further under a Section 125 plan). For employers, the administrative setup is minimal and there's no direct cost beyond the time spent enrolling employees.
Voluntary dental and vision is a reasonable starting point for businesses that want to offer benefits but aren't ready to absorb the employer contribution cost. Over time, many businesses move from voluntary to employer-contributed as the business grows and the competitive talent market demands it.
Employee Perceived Value of Dental and Vision
Survey data on employee benefits consistently shows that dental coverage ranks second only to health insurance in employee-stated importance. Vision typically ranks in the top five. These perceptions matter because benefits contribute directly to whether employees accept job offers, how long they stay, and how they feel about working for your business.
An employer who offers health but not dental and vision is offering a good benefits package. An employer who offers all three is offering a complete package. The difference in employee perception is disproportionate to the cost difference. Employees with dental work they need (which is a significant percentage of the workforce) notice immediately whether dental coverage is part of the offer.
For businesses competing for talent in the Fargo market or anywhere in ND and MN against employers with full benefit packages, adding dental and vision is usually the fastest way to close a benefits gap with minimal incremental cost.
To explore dental and vision options for your group, visit /employee-benefits or schedule a conversation with Kain Carlson.
Kain Carlson is an independent insurance advisor based in Fargo, ND, licensed in North Dakota and Minnesota. He works with owner-operated businesses across all three coverage pillars — commercial, benefits, and personal — under one advisory relationship. Schedule a review to see where your coverage stands.