Experience, marketing clout give Delta Dental a big edge in county.

Experience and marketing clout appear to dictate a company's position on the Business Journal's dental plans List (see below), which ranks the plans according to their enrollments in Los Angeles County.

San Francisco-based Delta Dental Plan of California placed first on The List with 1.12 million enrollees in Los Angeles County, which represents about a quarter of its statewide enrollment.

That leaves a huge margin between Delta and No. 2-ranked California Dental Health Plan, based in Tustin. California Dental has 385,000 enrolled in the county and 700,000 statewide.

It also has more than 1,200 participating dentists in its Los Angeles County network.

"We are the oldest and most experienced carrier, and that has given us the time to accumulate the experience, the name recognition and strategies that helps us dominate the marketplace" said Delta spokesman Jeff Album.

Indeed, of all the plans on The List, Delta is by far the oldest, formed in 1955. The second-oldest is PMI DeltaCare of Cerritos, which was founded in 1968. It placed fourth on The List.

PMI is also the largest plan based in Los Angeles County, with 750,000 members. Of that total, 575,000 are based in California, with 240,000 in the county.

Five of the 15 plans on The List were formed in the past decade. While 10 are are more than 20 years old, only three are more than 25 years old.

Rob Cohen, vice president of marketing for Smile Saver Dental Plan, based in Woodland Hills and No. 8 on The List, said that pre-paid dental plans have been soaring in popularity since the 1980s. Smile Saver was founded in 1981 and has 307,000 members, 150,000 of whom are in Los Angeles County.

"The 1980s are pretty much the time when the plans all started growing rapidly," Cohen said.

The reasons seem to be two-fold. Dental plans, according to Cohen and Album, cost about a tenth less than a medical plan and have not been subject to the runaway inflation that has affected medical care.

"People who still don't use their medical plans on a regular basis will still visit their dentists 2.6 times a year on average," Album said. "Given the employees' perspective that this benefit is going to be used, employers have recognized that adding a dental plan is a very cost-effective way to increase the value of total compensation."

As for the plans themselves, Album and Cohen believe the best performers in a given market are those with niche operations, headquartered near their core market. The List's numbers. tend to bear this out: While Delta, which is by far the largest dental plan in the state and the local leader in terms of numbers enrolled in L.A. County, less than a quarter of its statewide enrollment is here. The bulk of its 4.8 million California subscribers are in Central and Northern California, closer to its San Francisco headquarters.

In contrast, most of the Los Angeles and Orange County-based plans have anywhere from a third to a half of its enrollees in L.A. County.

No. 3 on The List, Anaheim-based Safeguard Health Plans, has more than 40 percent of its enrollment in Los Angeles County. No. 12 on The List, Long Beachbased Dental Health Services, has nearly 70 percent of its California enrollment in the county.