Dog Owners - Pet Insurance?

[luvmagoldn]

Do you have insurance on your pups? I did not have it with our previous dog but now that we have a puppy it seems like a good time to get it.

If you have it - did you get the accident/injury/illness only policy or did you add in preventive coverage as well?

Right now I am leaning toward not getting preventive coverage because I feel like we can handle those expenses no problem. It's the big $ surgery or treatments that I would want some coverage for.

Current policies I am looking at have maximum benefits of $14,000 or $7,000 depending on the policy.

[aliciar6]

no, we don't even have it on the cat who has a heck of a lot more in vet bills than the dog. I've never had pet insurance on any pet i have owned.

[aspentosh]

We've never had it on any of our pets. It seemed like there were too many exceptions to what they would cover.

[AAM2012]

Nope.

[Susie]

We don't. I prefer not to have lots of separate insurance policies (pets, jewelry, etc.), and instead just have an e-fund that can handle it.

[chessie]

We have Pets Best for our two dogs. We have coverage for illnesses/accidents only, routine stuff is pretty inexpensive and you can budget for. As for accidents/illness, one ER visit starts at like 1k and up in my area..so for us its worth it.

For example My chessie got ran over by a car, to stitch her back up, fix muscle was 1500 in ER, My insurance paid me back 80% after I paid the 100 deductible.

Example 2- Bulldog needed 2 ACL repairs, each was 1800 a piece, they paid 80% after my deductible, which is 100 per incident.

Example 3- Chessie had kidney disease and with treatment/covered all exrays, mri's, cat, after I hit my 100 deductible for that 1 illness and then paid 80%.

Over the course of 6 years it has paid out around 15k. I pay about 45 a month for two large dogs. We also have it for the horses, since one accident can be very costly as well. In the end I think without it, probably had to put the animals down sooner.

[scout8]

We have it for our dog. For the reasons you mentioned, we have the accident/injury/illness policy only, although I did purchase the cancer rider. I don't remember the amount of the max benefit for our policy.

[Deleted]

Yes. We got a wellness plan for the first year only, and that more than paid for itself with vaccinations, vet visits, and when she got ringworm over the summer.

We also have a separate accident insurance through Petsbest--we haven't needed to use it, but we can easily afford it and $17/month is worth the peace of mind.

[lanyac]

We had insurance through Banfield, the vet at Petsmart. It was $18-22/month depending on how old the dog was. It covers the normal cost of owning a dog.... You don't have to pay to see the vet, for any of the normal vaccines, for yearly check ups, yearly heartworm/fecal tests. If you need something done that's not covered, you get a discount. My dog was silly when she was younger and ate a whole frisbee, and so it helped cover some of the cost of the x-rays and treatment.

[minniebee]

Nov 14, 2012 9:54:46 GMT -5 aspentosh said:

We've never had it on any of our pets. It seemed like there were too many exceptions to what they would cover.

This.

Plus, we adopted our dog when he was 6. Starting a policy at that age is very expensive. We would have been paying something like $85/month, and it wouldn't even cover all our regular expenses and there was a pretty large deductible for surgeries, emergency visits, etc. It didn't seem worth it to us. We are comfortable enough financially we can handle it if something unexpected comes up.

[isabel]

Sort of. We have a plan through our vet. We paid $150 per dog and it's good for two years. We now only have to pay $10 when we take them in for an exam (routine or not), as opposed to $60. This has totally been worth it for us, but obviously I'm sure it's not offered many places.

Aside from that though, no, we don't have insurance. I looked into it a few times and decided that there were just too many exceptions to make it worth it.

[pamela]

No, but we also agree that we won't pay for extraordinary medical treatments for our animals. A few hundred for a growth removal, yes. Chemo, no. Our annual bill, with a few routine issues like an ear infection, minus heartworm/flea/tick meds is around $200-250 for the two of them. Not worth $20/month for us.

[kellbell191]

If you go back to the old Pets board the FAQ has a section on insurance policies, which ones are best and what they cover. I think we spend $50 a month for the dogs to have insurance with Pets Best. My one is part goat and has a tendency to eat foreign objects. Pets Best covered multiple ACL repairs for one Pets girl and multiple obstruction surgeries for another. The first month we had my dog I spent $3,000 in vet bills for gastro issues. Insurance would have covered 80% of anything over $500.

The two reputable companies that actually cover injuries and illness are Pets Best and Embrace. VPI is infamous for denying coverage; Banfield is infamous for misdiagnosis and inflating the price of treatment.

[jennistarr1]

I use VPI, have only had one claim and they covered it.

We did wellness for the first year, this second year we lowered the deductible and upped the coverage of the medical and dropped wellness. I pay 13.30 every 2 weeks.

To me, it's the difference of being able to worry less about the cost of care IF something were to happen. I wouldn't be disciplined enough to do a savings account but that would be another option