Pet Insurance & Wheelchairs
Basic Points of Almost All Pet Insurance Plans:
We looked at the most well known names in pet insurance—Pets Best, VPI, PetCare, Trupanion, 24 Pet Watch. Some of these companies just sell pet insurance. Others are underwritten by insurance companies that we are familiar with such as Aetna and some we aren't as familiar with such as Lombard Insurance, American National Property and Casualty Company or Pretorian. We don't think one strategy is better than the other, but it is good to understand who is really behind the brand name. Some of the universal key points that we discovered are listed here:
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- 30-50% of pets will visit an emergency clinic or have a major vet bill during their lifetime.
- No insurance covers pre-existing conditions. So once your pet is sick, it is too late to buy pet insurance!
- There is a period after you purchase pet insurance before it goes into effect. (See previous point.)
- You usually pay for the vet care upfront and get reimbursed. So you can choose any vet for service.
- Wellness care is either not covered or requires extra premium payments.
- Some plans exclude certain diseases like hip dysplasia and degenerative myelopathy and others don't.
- Premiums will increase either with age or as veterinary costs rise.
- Insurance plans impose limits either by maximum amount per event, year, or lifetime.
- The higher your premium, the lower the deductibles or maximum coverage.
So How Do the Pet Insurance Plans Stack Up?
First, we want you to know that we are not affiliated with any pet insurance nor will we receive any benefit from endorsing a particular pet insurance plan. What we provide below is based on information obtained on the internet or by a phone inquiry. We created two scenarios to get quotes that we thought would be of interest to our K-9 Cart dog wheelchair owners. The first scenario was with dachshund "Sushi" who was 5+ years old, spayed female, and had no known pre-existing health problems. The second scenario was German Shepherd dog "Sarge, who was 10+ years old, male neutered, and had no pre-existing health problems either.
What Do They Cover?
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The deductible: Most plans charge a deductible and then reimburse somewhere from 70-90%. But you need to ask yourself 70-90% of what. Two plans - Purina Care® and VPI - reimburse a percentage of a "scheduled benefit," "allowable costs," or "reasonable costs." Say what? That means that the pet insurance company pre-determines what a certain veterinary procedure should cost and only give you 70-90% of that amount. While we were not able to tell for sure what that amount is, we stopped looking any further at VPI , ASPCA, and Purina Care® health care plans for that reason. In addition, we couldn't tell for sure whether 24 Pet Watch (aka PetPlan in Canada) reimbursed based on a scheduled benefit or not. So all four insurances got a big thumbs down from us.
Heritable/Genetic Conditions: Since the vast majority of animals we see at K-9 Cart Company East have orthopedic or neurological conditions, we were very concerned about exclusions of certain diseases or breeds. While we don't think most bigger dogs need dog wheelchairs for hip dysplasia or cruciate tears, we do see some animals where those diseases on top of other problems can be a double whammy. Thus, we were disappointed that Pets Best insurance excludes a laundry list of conditions:
- Hip Dysplasia
- Elbow Dysplasia
- Osteochondritis Dissescans
- Epilespsy in German Shepherds, Dachshunds, Beagles, Labs, Belgian Tervuren, Goldens, and Keeshonds
- Patellar Luxation
So if your dog is older and doesn't suffer from any of these problems, Pets Best is probably a good choice. But if you have a 1-2 year old dog, we would probably stay away from this insurance too.
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Reimbursement Limits: At this point, we were left with only a handful of pet insurance companies from which to choose: Trupanion, PetCare, Embrace, and PetFirst. All three companies had the features we liked above of reimbursing the real cost of visiting your vet for an illness or emergency and not excluding heritable or genetic conditions. Some companies put a limit on how much they will reimburse per year, incident, or lifetime. If your pet has a chronic disease, such as diabetes, having a limit per incident, could be important. PetFirst has an annual incident limit of $1500-$3000 depending on the policy you choose. We would definitely avoid the $1500 incident level of insurance, since a single emergency room visit typically exceeds that amount.
When you consider that laminectomy or back surgery typically runs $5000+ then the reimbursement limits are important. Embrace has an annual limit of $10,000. Trupanion policies have a lifetime payout of limit of $20,000, but no annual or incident limit. Thus, we would rank Embrace or Trupanion slightly higher on the score card than PetFirst for a dachshund or German Shepherd, which are at high risk of needing expensive orthopedic surgery.
Mobility Aid Coverage/Alternative Care: Many owners tell us of the benefits of water therapy and accupuncture for degenerative myelopathy. Embrace Pet Insurance comes right out and says they don't cover there treatments. What is even worse, "prosthesis and mobility aids" aren't covered either. So we are very disappointed that our top two insurance choices - Embrace and Trupanion - will not cover your K-9 Cart Dog wheelchair. However, maybe it will soften the blow of paying $300-600 for your dog wheelchair to keep your pet mobile when those vet bills are 90% reimbursed.
Other stuff: Other things that pet insurance companies harp on is whether your policies are based on the age or breed of your pet or if prices change over time. Our gut feeling looking at the different policies are that the pricing is very competitive. Laws in the US do prevent companies from doing a bait-n-switch tactile of luring you in with a low price and then jacking up insurance rates. Competition does that as well. In addition, our veterinary experience is that having multiple orthopedic surgeries over a pet's lifetime is rare if done right the first time. Thus, pet insurance needs to be there when you require that first emergency or vet specialist's visit, but isn't something you will be using frequently. Rarely do pet insurances talk about their ratings, but the vast majority get high ratings and reviews from participants.
The Bottomline: Picking out pet insurance is confusing and difficult to compare between brands. Annual visits to your vet are a good way to have a second pair of eyes who will pick up disease earlier rather than later. Preventive care including vaccinations, good diet, and exercise will also help to minimize large vet bills. If you own a pure bred dog with a likelihood of developing certain diseases use that to guide your insurance choices. Pick an insurance that is going to reimburse you for the actual vet bill and not some limit that the insurance company has developed. Wouldn't pet insurance for 2010 be a good way to start out the New Year?
We hope our pet insurance blog has been helpful and are factually true to the best of our knowledge. Other pet insurance companies exist that we did not compare. We found the insurance comparisons at Trupanion and PetFirst to be the most helpful for evaluating the different policies. We welcome any comments, corrections, or suggestions. Please feel free to Contact Us.
Update on January 15, 2009: Trupanion contacted us and stated that, "that there was a gray area regarding dog wheelchairs. Upon further inquiry, I am pleased to share with you that Trupanion does cover the costs of dog wheelchairs as recommended by a veterinarian. Of course, the policy exclusions still apply to each situation in that the cost of wheelchair would not be covered if it were related to any preexisting condition or elective procedure." We are waiting to hear whether Embrace will give consider consideration to dog wheelchairs!