Pet insurance - curious question

[Kazm]

As a lot of you probably know through my other thread, Molly and I were attacked recently by a much bigger dog. Molly sustained terrible injuries but has improved so quickly and wants to act as she normally would. She’s proving to be a difficult patient now. I am impressed with her recovery. 
My husband and I were just talking about things. Obviously the vets bill was huge. We don’t and never have had pet insurance. We were wondering if we did have, how much would have been covered by an incident like this. 

[Kazm]

Thanks Snook. I’ll have a read of those links. We’ve always thought it’d probably work out cheaper to deal with issues rather than keep paying premiums when you may never actually make a claim. This is the worst we’ve ever dealt with. We’ve owned 3 dogs - 1 had a broken leg, Zena needed a ceaserean and this with Molly now. We’ve also had 5 cats and never had any vet issues with them. Touchwood (Lucy) We were just curious as to how insurance deals with emergency situations. 

[Rebanne]

a ceaserean would not be covered

[Dogsfevr]

It would be case of reading all and then understanding what is deemed an exclusion after the fact .

Dog attack most likely covered what the after effects of that claim is who knows 

 

Like many pet owners take it out but don’t vaccinate ,chances are they won’t be covered due to owners not ensuring they took all means to cover a disease .

Some won’t cover tiger test .

[Kazm]

2 hours ago, Rebanne said:

a ceaserean would not be covered

I didn’t think that would be.  Just things we’ve wondered over the years of being a pet owner. 

[Two Best Dogs!]

The dog attack would have been covered. e.g. I got 80% back when one of my dogs (accidentally!) injured the other.

(my plan pays me back on 80% of claims. I've yet to be declined)

 

When getting insurance, you just need to be very mindful of what is and isn't covered.

 

My main concerns were to be covered for: activity injuries, snake bite, emergency boarding if *I* am hospitalised, cancers/chemo. So far this has held true (so many activity injuries including a dreaded grass seed and one mystery tummy bug)

 

I am not covered for our rehab physio as the leg injury is pre-existing and ongoing to getting the insurance. But I have been covered when that leg got injured by a certain enthusiastic springing spaniel landing on that leg and injuring it further (to my dismay).

[suziwong66]

We were looking at pet insurance this past week. Soda (14 weeks) came with 6 weeks

free pet insurance.

 

From what we compared and discovered there are only 2 or 3 underwriters for pet insurance.

 

Depending on the policy, you could have an excess (most were about $150) or not (then you paid a higher premium).

 

Many of the things we wanted coverage for, were not available. Even extra routine cover wasn’t worth the bother. Eg You could claim $80 once for one item only, in a big list of things like desexing, behaviourial, training, osteo etc For an extra $10 a month added to the policy this wasn’t enticing for us.

 

Some policies wouldn’t cover for anything swallowed, some only covered one swalled accident and one had 2. None of the admin/agent people seemed well versed on this when we tried to get clarity on how many times a dog is covered  with accidental swallowing of items.

 

Some policies wouldn’t cover for anything if your dog wasn’t fully vaccinated. Many/most policies didn’t cover parvo even if dog was fully vaccinated.

 

Some policies covered cruciate injuries/patella etc, many did not. Of those that did cover cruciate injuries most required a vet check and clear certificate was supplied within 14 days of taking out insurance.

 

Emergency boarding had a dollar limit - most were pitiful.

 

Extras on many policies had many listed things you could claim but with a dollar limit that wasn’t very helpful.

 

The whole comparison exercise was incredibly difficult as most of the policies weren’t clear and were hard to compare. Speaking to agents was a waste of time - we didn’t get much clarity.

 

We ended up deciding not to go with insurance and instead decided to put the cost of the premium in an account. We have 3 labs so we’ll save for them all.

 

 

 

 

[Papillon Kisses]

I don’t think the full coverage is worth the paper it’s written on.  We have accident and ... health? The middle option.

 

It pisses me off that dental surgery and veterinary behaviour are excluded (there’s only one underwriter that includes mental health). The latter especially is ****** up stigma against mental illness BS that NEEDS TO DIE.

 

Anyway, for the dog attack we’d have got 80% back minus a per condition excess.

[sandgrubber]

They're making a profit... and pet insurance is one of the most profitable parts of the insurance market.  It follows that unless you have reason to bet your dog will require more care than most in its class, insurance is a loosing proposition and you are better off putting money into a rainy day fund.  Also beware, they jack up insurance rates as the dog reaches late middle age, so it's going to cost dearly when you are most likely to need it.