Pet insurance

[Possegal]

I have no pet insurance experience, but I do believe I helped put my vet's kid through college with my two cats. Despite having no experience, I'll still venture an opinion. I'd be inclined to go with the complete too. The extra $10 a month, for me at least, would have paid for itself in the money I spent on dental care for my one cat.

Hopefully folks with experience will chime in. In the meantime, I saw the picture and your puppy is adorable, congrats!

[OakLeaf]

We had VPI for our dogs. They reimbursed us for some pretty expensive care and never gave us a problem about it. It's been a few years, but based on that experience I would recommend them.

We didn't bother with the preventive care coverage. It didn't seem worth the extra premium. I think the place to start there is to consider how much it would cost you to pay for those services out of pocket (which is going to be different for every vet), vs. the premiums, vs. how much would be reimbursed by insurance.

The premiums will go up as your puppy gets older, but you're not locked into any plan either; you can always drop the preventive care coverage later.


Edit (simultaneous post with smilingcat): between the autoimmune blood disorder our one dog had (as motley a mutt as they come) and the trauma care I still have a hard time talking about... you're looking at more like $5-10,000 for something catastrophic. Just FYI. When we had VPI, the different plans also had different levels of maximum coverage, too.

[ginny]

Hi - I have my horse insured, and until my dog was ridiculously old, I had him insured through VPI. I have had the horse insurance work out well for me ($8000:colic surgery+1month hospitalization cost me closer to $1000). The dog insurance didn't benefit me cost wise, but I would do it again for the next dog. Here's why: it's insurance. I would hate to have to euthanize my animal for something that is 100% fixable, but very expensive. I would either have a serious savings account for the next puppy or insurance (let's face it, puppies get into bad doggy situations). The insurance helps me sleep at night. I wouldn't have to face the question of debt vs patching up my dog. This is just my reasoning. I am sure everyone has their own opinions on this, but this is how I arrived at purchasing insurance for my animals. Just an aside, VPI was perfectly fine in my opinion.

[divingbiker]

Smilingcat, I agree with you in theory. But my last three dogs had many $2000/month vet bills, not $2000/year, and while I can "afford" it, it's at the expense of bolstering my savings and retirement accounts. I'm spending over $150/month for EACH of my current dogs' medicines.

If Sammy follows the health path of my previous dogs, I'll come out ahead paying insurance premiums. But it's a crapshoot, and I'm not a big fan of insurance in general.

Thanks for all the thoughts. I'm leaning away from routine coverage, because as I read more about it, I found the max it will cover is $400/year. It's the big expenses I want to have covered, I think.

I'd love to hear about other folks' experience and ideas. Thanks again!

[Kalidurga]

In my case, hindsight is 20/20. If I'd known two years ago what I was headed for at the end of 2007 and all through 2008, I would have insured my cats in a heartbeat. I spent almost $6k for the older cat who had renal failure and ended up euthanized, over $3k for one kitten that I adopted who got an almost fatal infection and spent three weeks going back and forth to the vet, then almost another $3k on the other kitten who had trench mouth that took a year to clear up. I'm still trying to pay off my credit card from all of those vet bills.

Of course, now that the kittens are entering adulthood and seem to be healthy, I'm less inclined to shell out a monthly premium. It's a tough choice, because you just don't know when something's going to come up.

[GLC1968]

I almost bought insurance with my previous dog when she was young (I think it was VPI, too) but opted not too. Funny thing was, I'd first learned of if when she was already in the hospital having surgery for swallowing a needle! I figured that was my $$$ payout for this dog, so chances of it happening again were slim. She really didn't cost me much (except preventative care) until she was diagnosed with Lymphoma when she was MUCH older, so I'd made the right choice.

When we adopted a new young puppy from the shelter, we thought about insurance again but opted against it. So far, it's paid off... It was really strange to go from basically weekly vet visits with the old dog to once a year visits with the puppy! I started to miss all the people at the vet! Honestly, our two dogs don't even have a vet yet here in OR. They are happy, healthy dogs. Ahhh, youth! Insurance would have been a serious waste of money for us.

[snapdragen]

At one point I added up the "well dog care" and compared it to what VPI would pay vs. what I'd paid VPI -- the preventative coverage wasn't worth it. They were lifesavers when my first corgi, Rikki, had lymphoma. I had opted to buy the Cancer Rider a couple of years before, it really came in handy, and I didn't go bankrupt.

Chloe is covered too, thankfully I haven't had to use it a lot. They covered all of her specialist visits when she had corneal ulcers, and the different xrays she's had over the years.

[kermit]

Don't forget your Home Again chip. That is money well spent!