Well, the part of the problem was that we (my wife and I) accidentally picked the wrong dental plan so there was less coverage than we thought. Also, I don't know how it works for other people, but for the dentals plans we can get, you get set amount of coverage for the year (calendar or fiscal, I never remember) and once you use it up, the insurance doesn't cover anything until the new year starts.
By the time I needed my root canal, I had used up most of my coverage, so the root canal would've cost me $1500 and the subsequent crown would've cost me additional $1500. The kicker was when my dentist told me that there was a decent chance the particular tooth wouldn't withstand the root canal and he'd have to just extract the tooth, which would've still cost me $1500 since the procedure started out as a root canal (at least that's what I was told). I told him to just pull out the tooth.