penguinbar

Hi guys. Does anyone here have any good recommendations for pet health insurance? My beloved cat Molly was healthy all her life until she was having various issues a few months ago. Unfortunately we had to put her down a few weeks ago. It was so devastating.I miss her terribly. She was covered by VPI and the reimbursements were absolute crap. We spent about 3500 and got back just over 1000.
We got a new cat that we called Denney from the ASPCA a few weeks ago. I have been looking at Pet Plan and Healthy Paws. Anyone familiar with them?
Sorry again about Charlie Jerseygirl.

md95065

Sorry to hear about your cat - I went through that a few years ago.

I looked at pet health insurance a couple of times and came to the conclusion that it really wasn't worth it because, as you discovered, the coverage just isn't good enough.

Nutmegger

So sorry about Molly. Losing a beloved pet is so heartbreaking. I hope Denney is with you for a long time. My vet has the brochures for VPI, but I always figure that you don't need it when the pet is young, and it's a bust when they get old. Putting the premiums in a jam jar for later might be the best bet! But I've heard of ASPCA offering insurance (or at least a tie-in). Here's the site:

http://www.aspcapetinsurance.com/

dunroving

Ditto, plus every year or two the company I was with went bust or merged with another company so I became a "new" customer and as Suzy (my dog) got older, the premiums got higher.

She's currently almost 15, has had almost no health problems, her current premiums are £55 per month and I've probably paid £8k/$14k in premiums over her lifetime.

There's part of me that thinks if she had a health condition so bad that it would cost $1,000's to treat I wouldn't put her through it.

I almost think it's better just to put money away every month in a special healthcare account and use as and when needed, rather than pay pet health insurance.

sir_eccles

Another vote against, that's what the Amex is for.

We had to let our cat go a couple of weeks ago (late stage kidney disease and eventually what we think was the cat equivalent of stroke which did her in). We had decided long ago not to do any invasive care and knew it was time but still it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Squirrel

Guess it depends on how good you are at keeping money by! I'm hopeless so would rather go with the insurance. If something happened suddenly (I'm thinking especially an accident or something like that) and the vet says we can save her but it's going to cost $3000, it would be good with insurance to not even think where am I going to get the money?, but just say to the vet 'Go ahead and do your darndest and hang the cost.' Young cats have accidents, especially outdoor ones.

I'm sorry for the loss of Molly. We have a bunny who is her namesake. She's really getting on now, 9 and a half, old for a bun!

zargof

The trouble is with pet insurance is that you have to pay the money upfront and then they will reimburse you, so if you don't have the money already it's useless. That plus the fact that what they cover is limited as others have stated.

penguinbar

My husband works at the ASPCA. Their in insurance plan isn't very good. We didn't do any invasive procedures just xrays, blood tests antibiotics but she went to the vet about 10 times in 3 months and they didn't even charge me for everything. Thanks for everyone's condolences. Sorry Sir-eccles and any one else who recently or ever lost a pet. They are like family.

HarryTheSpider

Hi All

Sorry to hear of all your recent losses - some people don't appreciate how strong the bond can be between pet and human (I don't like to use the term 'owner').

We have 4 papillon dogs, 3 that came over with us, 1 that is a recent rescue. All are old and have some kind of medical issue, mostly very low level... Though we have recently shelled out 4 figures for treatment of 2 of them.

The practicalities are easy to overlook - that you have to pay up front - schemes like CareCredit can help - it's basically a credit card for human & pet medical bills. And then there is no guarantee that the insurers will pay up anything close to what you believe they will...

In the past few years we have spent around $13k in vet bills - lots of cancer, infected womb, eye and spine problems... But these guys are like our kids, so it was a big deal for us - no question we wouldn't do everything we could within reason to save them... We were lucky to have a couple of truly excellent surgeons...

... If you can be disciplined, put the equivalent of insurance premiums aside each month - for old girls like ours, insurance is very expensive... This way YOU have the money (+ potential interest), when you need it, no worries about the insurers not paying up... One less worry when your little loved one is in medical stress...

Good luck!

Harry

penguinbar

We decided on healthy paws. Hopefully we won't have to use it too much!

Scouse Express

We lost our beloved Cat, Sophie, in August, due to Cancer which came on very quick, indeed.

We spent just a tad under $1,000 trying to save her, exploring all the options etc. Personally, I'm in agreement with everyone else. Screw the insurance and just put the money away.

If you don't need to use it for your Pet, treat yourself to something nice when all is said and done.

We still have Sophie's sister, Abby, to keep us company.


Jim.

Jerseygirl

I've had 9 dogs and haven't bought pet insurance for any of them. None have suffered from a serious illness...so I have never had huge bills from the vet.

penguinbar

I spent almost $10,000 on my cat Bailey because he didn't have insurance. It's only $25 a month for Healthy Paws. My cats are like my kids. I never wanted children but I've always loved animals.

Squirrel

Ditto here. Fortunately DH felt the same.

jmood

Sorry to those of you who had pet losses this year. My 18 year old died late this summer and I'm still not over it.

Penguinbar, when I first brought my cat over here, she had an insurance, I did get about 80% reimbursed for the first cancer operation she had, which was good. Each condition had a "cap" though. However 2 things:

-Pet insurance does not cover pets over the age of 13 (I think, can't remember exactly)

-If you want your pet to get the "best" medical treatment no matter what, you have to ignore the insurance. Unfortunately veterinary medicine is much much behind human medicine which means so is insurance

Good luck and best of health to all the pets...