At the same time, though, I’ve had friends whose dogs had lots of vet expenses, and would have appreciated having insurance. And I’m frugal enough that paying more than $1500 for a vet bill would make me start to question what to do. And I don’t really want that to happen. My dog is worth far more than that…it’s just that our budget would suffer serious damage if we paid more than that.

So, I’ve been investigating pet insurance. Healthy Paws and Petplan seem to be the best options for us, paying 80-100% of the bills, after the deductible. So I think that some of the people in this thread have based their decisions based on some older pet insurance policies, and thought that others might want to do their own research.

I had a dog who died of kidney failure at age 3. His initial diagnosis was when he was nine months old, so, if we had saved the cost of his monthly premiums for that $3,000 vet bill, we would have saved only $210. (We had the insurance for six months, as we got him when he was three months old.) Instead, we were reimbursed about $1,500 of our vet bill.

Our current dog ruptured one cranial cruciate ligament at age 4. Within the period of treatment for that injury, we quickly broke even and began making money each month. He ended his treatment, but has now ruptured the CCL in his other leg, so we expect to get into the break even point again very quickly and reach a point where our reimbursements exceed our premiums. And, this is without surgical treatment, just physical therapy. Surgical treatment would have taken us past the break even point immediately.

These were both giant breed dogs, and their health care is really expensive when something goes wrong. We do not have coverage for regular check-ups, which are reasonable expenses for us to expect to pay. (Our insurance company offers that coverage, but the trade-off in premium expense is not worth it.) Without that insurance we would have had to go into debt to pay for his treatment, because we would have wiped out our savings, if we had been saving the premium amount since we got this dog.

For anyone who has a large or giant breed, I definitely recommend insurance. For smaller dogs and cats, you are probably right–the lifetime premium payments are more than you would likely spend at the vet.

Sure, you can self-insure anything, I could self-insure my medical expenses, but everyone knows that would be stupid. So why are pets different? They’re not. Anyone with a pet will tell you that $300 isn’t going to pay for any major, veterinary procedure. Pet injuries and illnesses can cost well over $5,000 to treat, which means it would take more than 16 years of “self-insurance” to pay for the procedure. Furthermore, how do you pay for a major procedure if it happens in year 2 or 3 or 5?

Discipline and psychology aside, this article is nothing more than bad opinion and conjecture. If Ms. Schultz put even 5 minutes into her research she would find that respected pet insurance companies like Embrace offer wellness programs and flexible plans to meet your needs and fit your financial situation.

Of course none of us like paying for something we don’t use, but that’s not the point of insurance. Insurance is a hedge against potential, future financial losses and there is no better time in our country’s history for responsible pet owners to insure their loved ones in order to avoid putting a $9,000 hip replacement on their credit card.

I’m shocked this was posted on such a respectable publications website.

I’m going to differ in opinion here to most. My wife and I kept the insurance for our recently passed cross-collie, simply because we never wanted his health and life to be a financial decision. We’re glad we did because in his later years, and especially the last few months, the costs were coming more frequently.

We loved that dog and we miss him, but at least we don’t have any regrets. We gave him all we could and when it was that time it was because that’s the way nature would have it, not because we couldn’t afford his vet’s bills or a required treatment.

We have a cat and a dog and are self-insured when it comes to their care. The insurance just doesn’t see worth it.

I agree with you. Insurance is for catastrophic events. Get a good coverage for illness and accident. No routine care, because that mean delegating your buget to an insurance company. Select a deductible amount as high as possible (equal to the financial risk you are able to take). Your premium should then be within a reasonable limit. If your emergency fund is big enough,let say more than 10,000$, you can always skip the insurance. But I think most pet owners will be caught in an emotional dilemma that sounds like : is this reasonnable ? What if Kitty dies anyway shortly after that 8,000$ treatment ? And then, worst case scenario, what happen if you lose your employment shortly after spending that emergency fund ? I guess you get the picture.

All this being said, pet owners are the primary beneficiaries of this kind of insurance. The are buying themself emotional comfort. Fluffy has no clue about this.

Not everybody has a backyard.

Oh, and sorry about your cat.

Years ago I rescued another dog that needed 2 major liver surgeries among other surgeries. I did not have insurance and it took over a year to pay off the bill.

I kept puting off getting insurance because of all the negativety I read about. Then I read an article about Embrace that changed my mind. I didn’t get the coverage until my girl was 5 (accident and wellness) and my boy was 8 (accident only).

When the time came to make the claims, I paid my yearly deductible first (which i chose) and then they paid 80% of the bill. They let me know when they received the bill from the vet, and when my check is going out (within a month). I don’t know what I would’ve done without them.

For me, my furchildren are just that, My children. To me this insurance is worth every penny.

*As an aside, the seizures were caused by an infected uterus. We got her when she was already 10 years old and thought it would be too risky to get her spayed at her advanced age. Turns out it was riskier not to – always fix your pets! It was an expensive and stressful lesson for us.

Things are a bit different “down under”, when our dog dies he will be buried in the backyard – cremation you must be kidding.

I do have a question regarding your post : you wrote that Home and Health Insurance are important for you. But, given that you have young children, what about Life Insurance ?

A few of the other comments I will make note of. $365 per year on pet care would work for young healthy cats, but probably not dogs. If your pet was to get sick, injured, or have a treatable but uncurable disease, such as diabetes, then medical costs will be much greater than $300 per year.

Care Credit was mentioned, and is offered at many clinics. Our hospital offers a plan with 6 months no interest. Another poster mentioned that it is rare to do procedures for more than $2400. It’s not that rare or uncommon for hospitals to perform procedures that cost much more than that. Hip replacements for dogs range from $3500 to $5500 per leg in our area of the country.

The decision of how much money to spend and how far you are willing to go with your pets is an individual decision. I see people every day willing to do anything and everything it takes, no matter the cost. I also see people who are like the first poster, although they are rare. For pet insurance the bottom line is I think it’s worth it, just do your research.

To the people who say pet insurance doesn’t cover hereditary or chronic conditions: Yes it does. You have to look for companies that will cover it. Mine does, I pay $32/mo and I have a $200 per incident deductible then 100% coverage up to $8,000 per year. They cover chronic and hereditary conditions and they guarantee policy renewal regardless of your claims.

I don’t expect to or want to “get back” my premium. I love my pet and I love my money, I never want to be put into a position to choose between the two.

Edit: I also want to note that I adopted my Golden Retriever and I bought insurance for him in case he had poor breeding. My main concerns were hereditary conditions so I made darn sure it was covered.

As to the value of pet insurance, every time I’ve done the math, it just hasn’t worked out. There’s too many things it doesn’t cover, most insurance only insures during the times your dog is less likely to have issues and even the stuff it does cover it covers at a pittance in comparison, so by the time you’ve paid your part you might as well have just self insured and socked the money into an interest bearing account. I’ve paid $300 every 3 months for a chronic condition in my dog (that the insurance would have covered $50 of each time whoo!), I’ve paid $600 to have a growth cut out and checked. I buy better food for her health (though, at $50 / 30# it’s hardly expensive) and I’ve spent plenty on her in other expenses, but even totaling it all out, I’ve come out ahead. Even if I had to spend $5000 in one go, at the rates my bank gives me for personal loans, that’s a mere $100 / month (and only $30 more than insurance would cost). Ultimately, I’ve decided that if the time ever came when I was looking at outlaying a large chunk of cash like that in one go, and looking at continuing expenses after that, then I would let my dog go. She is a wonderful dog, but her life has been hard and she owes me nothing. I can’t look her in the face and explain all the pain she’s about to go through is for her own good, or how even though she’s suffering with whatever calamity has befallen her, that I still want her around. When her time comes, it’s her time, and even if insurance could make it so that her living 6 more months was affordable, I don’t think the cost to her would be worth it.

I think the biggest challenge for the whole insurance issue, is no one really knows about it, nor have the incentive to ask, just yet. I bet one day, it’ll be as mainstream as life insurance (for humans)

When you have experienced the love and joy of owning a pet for several years, I think you know deep down that rationality aside, you would pay pretty much anything for a chance to save your animal when you are at the vet, holding that warm, furry, confused body. I would always make decisions based on that prospect.

My opinion on the insurance subject is don’t get it. Spend your money on high quality food and pet products and put some in an emergency fund. Lots of health issues can be avoided with a healthy diet, and those that can’t are covered with your emergency fund. Let’s call it a Health Savings Account for pets.