do you have any recommendations or information about pet insurance? my kitty is going in for some pricey dental work (which i can thankfully afford!) and it made me worried about always being able to afford the care she needs.

xenopaxi:

talesfromtreatment:

I do not, unfortunately. I would ask your vet which ones have been the most useful for their clients and the easiest to work with

HI HI HELLO

I am a receptionist at a major veterinary ER in the PNW. Dealing with insurances is part of my day-to-day job, and it’s one of my two major soapboxes that I lecture people trapped in my lobby about; the other one is to keep your GODDAMN CATS INSIDE.

PLEASE BUY PET INSURANCE!!!

There are tons of providers out there so you should be able to find one that fits your budget and needs. All health insurance is evil but imo pet insurance is decidedly less evil than its human counterpart.

One of my ER vets is fond of telling people, “Unless you can write a check for $15,000 without blinking, you should get pet insurance.” He is right and has also performed brain surgery on cats and dogs. Trust the criticalist, doctor, surgeon, and also my favorite vet on this.

As I have no referral links or codes or whatever, to anyone reading this, I am not getting paid to say this; I just really hate seeing people have to choose between money and their best friend’s life. Veterinary medicine is expensive, much more than it used to be, partially because we can do so much more than we used to be able to.

Just like human insurance, pre-existing conditions are a thing; insurance is evil and will not cover them. The best time to insure your pet is when they are young before they have any conditions. Most pet insurances that I’ve seen also have some breed restrictions, e.g. your German shepherd’s hip dysplasia surgery may not be covered as much as your mutt dog’s.

Like I said, there are tons of providers, so please research them to find the best one for you. I will rank my top three here, though. I know the most about the first one (since I have it and work with them the most), so that bullet point will be much, much bigger than the others 😅.

1. Trupanion.

Trupanion is one of (if not THE) oldest providers of pet insurance, the biggest dog on the block so to speak. They are going to have one of the most expensive premiums, but if you’re paranoid like me, I don’t mind paying some extra each month to make my anxiety go away.

Trupanion is the best provider in my opinion because they do not have an upward limit: if your pet needs to hospitalized at an expensive specialty hospital for a month and you end up with an invoice of $75,000, guess what, they’re still going to pay their 90%. Now that’s still ~$7,500 you need to come up with, but that’s a down payment on a decent car, not a fucking house. (Yes, this example is based off of a situation I actually saw, the pet made a full recovery!!!)

Trupanion also has Direct Pay, which is really nice. With the Direct Pay, I submit your invoice on your behalf before I have to ask you for money. Which means 1) I don’t have to ask you for a $10,000 deposit for your dog’s foreign body surgery and 2) you don’t have to figure out how to navigate insurance bullshit when your pet is in the hospital.

They ALSO do pre-approvals. Does your cat need an endoscopy for a linear foreign body (strings) or for hairties (😑)? I can submit a pre-approval to Trupanion for you so you can make sure that the procedure is covered and get an idea of how much you’ll be responsible for.

2. Embrace.

I don’t personally have Embrace nor does Embrace have a Direct Pay feature (as of me writing this) so I know a lot less about them. However, from my interactions with clients who have Embrace, I haven’t heard really anything too bad about them.

They have some damn good coverage (unsure about upward limit) and they have a bonus sales pitch point: with Embrace, the more pets you have insured with them, the lower your monthly premium is. I think this is per pet, not overall, but hey, that’s still pretty good! If you have four cats and three dogs, this way you don’t have to choose between them or a $700 monthly premium.

3. Nationwide.

Nationwide is only on this list because they’re more forgiving about pre-existings. If you don’t have pre-existings, I recommend going with one of the above. Also, do your research on if whatever pre-existing your pet has is covered.

Now there are so many providers out there, ones I’ve seen include:

- Pet’s Best

- Healthy Paws

- MetLife

- Fetch!

- FIGO

- Lemonade

- Pumpkin

- Pawpy (spelling?)

- but I’m sure there are more.

Anyways, please, please buy pet insurance. Hopefully you’ll never need it and I’m just telling you to throw some money away every month. But if you ever do need it, you will cry tears of joy that you have it.

Demographics that are insane to own without pet insurance include but are not limited to: literally any kind of bulldog (please stop breeding them) since they have every health condition ever, ANY brachycephalic breed of dog please they are so bad at breathing they WILL get aspiration pneumonia, any kind of purebred cat (heart failure!), male cats (yes literally any male cat, urinary obstructions are extremely common, painful as fuck, life-threatening, and require hospitalization), any kind of really food-motivated breed (labs, goldens, and kind of doodle also please stop breeding doodles, they are many reasons), and kind of “long” dog (dachshunds, corgis, bassets, etc) IVDD (aka slipped disks) are pretty common, extremely painful, around $15,000 on average (for the MRI, veterinary neurologist, surgery, and hospitalization) and also need to be dealt with ASAP, past 48 hours of going fully down-in-hind has less than a 5% chance and regaining use of the back legs. Also Bernese Mountain Dogs. If you own a BMD and don’t have pet insurance you’re an idiot.

Anyways, please buy pet insurance, spay/neuter your pets, vaccinate your pets, don’t induce vomiting at home, don’t own anything with xylitol if you can help it, don’t keep anti-freeze on your property/anywhere except a locked safe, doublecheck what kind of “lily” you’re bringing home if you own a cat - even the pollen can be deadly, don’t leave toddlers or stupid people unsupervised with grapes if you own a dog, know your nearest emergency vet’s location, hours, and if they accept your pet insurance, DON’T TAKE THE CONE OFF UNTIL THE VET TELLS YOU TO - YES, YOUR DOG KNOCKING OVER EVERYTHING IN YOUR HOUSE IS ANNOYING AND SO IS YOUR CAT IS THROWING A TANTRUM ABOUT EATING WITH IT ON - I DON’T CARE, or ever give a “human” medication unless a vet has instructed you otherwise.

And please buy pet insurance. I don’t want to see you choose between your pet’s life and feeding your children and self. I see it everyday and it’s one of the worst things I’ve ever seen.