Toothsome, a dentist-founded technology company focused on employer-funded dental care, has become the first dental provider to have its contract published on the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Wellness platform. The agreement introduces a direct-care approach to dental benefits, giving self-funded employers and benefits advisors a publicly available framework for funding routine dental services outside traditional dental insurance arrangements.
The agreement allows employers to establish an annual dental allowance that eligible participants can use with any licensed dentist, subject to their employer’s plan rules. Under the current service structure, participants pay their dental providers directly and receive reimbursement for approved expenses through their employer’s payroll system.
By publishing the agreement on Cost Plus Wellness, Toothsome aims to make dental benefit administration more transparent while giving employers greater flexibility in structuring employee dental benefits. The agreement also publicly outlines the applicable administration fee, providing employers and benefits advisors with additional visibility into program costs.
The initiative reflects Toothsome’s broader philosophy that financing routine healthcare expenses and protecting against major financial risks should be treated as separate functions. While traditional insurance remains important for catastrophic financial exposure, the company believes predictable dental expenses can be supported through direct funding arrangements with transparent terms.
The employer-funded dental allowance is designed as a limited benefit rather than a replacement for catastrophic insurance coverage. This distinction aligns with the growing direct-care movement, particularly direct primary care models that emphasize straightforward payment structures and fewer administrative barriers between patients and healthcare providers.
Beyond employer-funded dental benefits, Toothsome is developing medical-dental coordination capabilities intended to better connect dental visits with a patient’s existing primary care provider. These capabilities are designed to support communication between dental practices and direct primary care organizations or conventional medical groups.
The company’s development efforts emphasize preventive-care follow-up, accountable referrals and handoffs between providers, and documentation confirming that recommended care has been completed. By strengthening coordination between oral healthcare and medical services, Toothsome aims to address the longstanding separation between dental and primary care delivery.
This approach recognizes that oral health can influence broader health outcomes and that dental appointments may create opportunities to identify concerns requiring additional medical attention. Better coordination could help patients navigate follow-up care while enabling healthcare providers to maintain a more complete understanding of their patients’ needs.
For self-funded employers, the published agreement provides an alternative framework for supporting routine dental expenses while maintaining flexibility over benefit allowances and program administration. For dentists, the model is intended to preserve clinical independence and allow treatment decisions to remain between providers and their patients.
Toothsome does not operate as an insurance company and does not direct clinical diagnoses or treatment decisions. Instead, its technology and benefit framework focus on enabling employer-funded dental care and developing connections between dental and medical providers.
The company’s first dental contract on Mark Cuban Cost Plus Wellness represents an expansion of the platform’s publicly available direct-care arrangements into dentistry, while establishing a foundation for Toothsome’s longer-term efforts to integrate oral healthcare more closely with primary care.
KEY QUOTES
“Direct primary care has challenged the idea that every routine visit needs an insurance transaction. Dentistry deserves the same rethink. We enable employers to fund care, dentists to exercise their clinical judgment, and patients to make educated care decisions without friction.”
Dr. Shouvik Ponnusamy (“Dr. Samy”), Co-Founder of Toothsome and Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeon
“Dentistry is an absolutely vital part of primary care. Oral health is part of overall health, yet the two are still funded and delivered as if they were separate. Direct care gives us an opportunity to connect the clinical relationship with a way to fund the full patient journey.”
Dr. Shouvik Ponnusamy (“Dr. Samy”), Co-Founder of Toothsome and Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeon
