May 26, 2008
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Pet Insurance
1. Do any of you have pet insurance? Any tips/recommendations/etc?
2. What’s the most you’ve ever spent at the vet on a single incident? In a year?
I have no clue what a reasonable “Lifetime Spending Cap” or “Per Incident Amount” would be.
So complicated!edit: To be clear – I want to get pet insurance because I know we will be willing to spend an unreasonable to non-pet-owners amount of money if something should happen. And I think insurance will allow us to not have sticker shock at the moment the bill hits or they ask us whether they should do whatever – I’d like to take the immediate money fears out of the equation. I expect our spoiled butts to live loooong healthy lives – which means they’ll have crazy diseases towards the end that will cost a lot. But we’ll be ready.
Thanks so much for the comments. It really helps to get an idea of how much these things can run.
Comments (4)
I don’t have pet insurance. The most I’ve spent is ~$700, which was the bill for Jessica’s recent emergency visit, during which they took a series of x-rays and examined her and that’s it. At the time I decided that $25,000 would be too much to pay to save her, but I wasn’t sure what the real lower limit would be. Fortunately I didn’t have to find out at that point. It was about 12 or 13 years ago that Allister had his hip surgery, which I think at the time was also ~$700. I’m guessing today it would run quite a bit more – maybe upwards of $2,000? $3,000?
$1800, give or take a little on Scratchy’s first diabetic episode last summer. I’d have never thought I’d be willing to spend that on a pet, but one look at S told me that there was no limit.
$2000+ at the emergency vet for x-rays and what turned out to be unneccesary exploratory surgery for the dog
Close to $1000 treating hepatitis in the cat. (this included over a week in hospitalization)
If you have a vet you trust, check with them about insurance plans they accept & like. Ours has a few she prefers.
I’m probably not a good example since I’m an extremely low maintenance pet owner – cat food and cat litter for indoor only cats, no vet visits unless absolutely necessary, but maybe I’ve just been lucky. Had 1 cat put to sleep for advanced kidney failure $100, had a previous cat rescued from swallowing a needle and thread ~$200, had a cat before that given a blood transfusion due to extreme flea infestation ~$150 (before I discovered the joys of “indoor only” cats) but I’m of the opinion that cats are pets, not people so I probably wouldn’t go to the extreme lengths that others would. Don’t know what I’d do for a dog since I’ve never had one.