Emergency/illness Vet Fees

[mushka]

I am trying to decide whether to have my dog insured - the policy I am looking at would cover illnesses and injuries not routine vet check-ups or vaccines. Can anyone give me an idea of how much they have forked out in vet fees at one time and then later been reimbursed by insurance?

I am trying to decide between taking out a policy or just banking the fees against any future mishap.

Edited June 1, 2011 by mushka

[CareyJ]

I am trying to decide whether to have my dog insured - the policy I am looking at would cover illnesses and injuries not routine vet check-ups or vaccines. Can anyone give me an idea of how much they have forked out in vet fees at one time and then later been reimbursed by insurance?

I am trying to decide between taking out a policy or just banking the fees against any future mishap.

PIA paid out $7000 in under 3 weeks for cancer diagnosis and treatment for a 21 month old dog - got it all back minus $100 excess in 10 days. We never thought we would have to use it for illness and got it more for accident/injury like ACL etc. We had never had insurance before and would never be without it again just based on this one experience. The amount we were paid out was more than we would have paid in premiums in 10 years!

Knowing people who have dogs with alergies, that have needed joint operations and all sorts of other things, and knowing the cost for after hours consult and dignosis it made sense to us.

Remember though that you still need to be able to pay the bills and claim it back through insurance later.

[Life Of Riley]

My insurance has paid out about $6000 for my dog, she was lame and got xrays done at my regular vet and then went to the specialists for CT Scans and endoscopy.

I have also had a few other smaller claims of $300 - $1000 Insurance paid out within a week of receiving my claims.

My vet bills in the first year have easily cost what my pet insurance would cost for the next 10 - 12 years.

[pixie_meg]

$250 excess with PIA and we had a bill over $1000. got $850 back. this was after just 4 months of insurance.

[StarLapyz]

Have had a few dogs with PetPlan and had no issues getting them to pay out on claims.

A couple of grand a few times with no hassles or arguments or anything.

[MsKatie]

Had a bl**dy dog eat a river stone on the Sunday of a long weekend - required surgery - PIA paid all of the $2000 minus the $250 excess - was very glad I had it:)

[Pretty Miss Emma]

I have one insured dog and one uninsured (she was too old for illness when I got her so decided that I would just bank money for her).

So the insured one (only 19 months old) so far has cost me almost nothing other than normal check up type fees.

The uninsured one has probably cost me around $10,000 since October last year maybe more. Most recently it was probably $4000 in emergency due to having pneumonia and then hyperglycaemia. There is absolutely no way known that I would not have treated her, so had to just fork the money out.

If you end up with a trip or two to emergency in their life time I reckon the insurance has paid itself off. I think I worked out that if the insurance premium didn't rise then the couple of problems we've encountered recently would be the whole lifetime cost of the premium, and I've only had the old uninsured girl for 3 years!!

I did look into including the routine care option, but it ended up that I would only be able to get back about $5 per year so I figured I'd rather not bother with that bit of it!