Pet insurance

[al & chris]

Is pet insurance worth it?
Just got our renewal through for our 15 year old cross breed dog Sophie. Quote this year is £755 !!
Last year was £547 and year before £432. We have been with same company for around last 10 years and have claimed very little over the years..
5 years ago when she got to the age of 10 the level of cover was also automaticly reduced even though the price we pay keeps going up.
It looks to me like pet insurance companies are ripping us off and playing on our sentimental side towards pets.
Think I would now recommend anyone just getting a pet to go with a vets pet plan and not bother with an insurance scheme .
What a rip off

[helen&tony]

Hi
That'll be Pet-Plan, then??
What you've paid in 3 years would cover anything a cross-breed would likely need...Don't forget that ALL insurance is to benefit share-holders...NOT policy-holders
You would almost certainly benefit from ASKING a vet re: a pay-in scheme.
Depending on the cross-breed, most are incredibly strong, anyway!
Cheers
Helen

[the.sasquatch]

It was worth it for me, I've not even had my cat a year and he's already racked up £1200 in vets bills! I wouldn't have been able to keep him without the insurance. I'd certainly rather have it and not need it than not have it and need it

[helen&tony]

Hi
Crikey...that's incredible ...why so darned expensive?...It sounds as though a visit to the Blue Cross might be in order???
Cheers
Helen

[scanner]

My daughter had problems with Animal Friends trying to say that a scratched eye that needed treatment at the Animal Health Trust was the continuation of infant conjunctivitis on one of her Boxers and had to fight like mad to get them to pay anything and even when they did pay up they retained twice the level of excess set out in the policy. So in a fit of pique she told them to cancel that policy AND the one on her second Boxer as it seemed to be pointless paying for cover that didn't exist when you wanted it.

A couple of weeks later before she had got around to taking out new cover (she was busy buying a new house and legal problems had reared their head) the second boxer developed prostate problems and ended up spending a week in the same Animal Health Trust hospital and had 2 operations.
His bill came to over £7000!

Personally I'd start paying a set monthly amount, roughly the same as the premium, into a cash ISA - then if there is a profit it's yours.

[Dr Fingers]

Lost our last springer to leukaemia..£4.5 k in three weeks, just to get a diagnosis, thankfully insured (tesco, no quibbles, paid up no problem).

Current dog is lab, £34 pm lifetime cover with animal friends. Worth every penny, would not have a dog without insurance under any circumstances.

It's not the insurers who are the thieves, it's not even the vets (ask a typical vet how much they get paid by their practice owners) it's whoever actually sets these outrageous vets fees. They are frankly extortionate, and it's high time there was some sort of investigation into 'price fixing' in this industry. Try phoning round your local vets for a quote so you can compare prices..you won't get far.



Derek

[helen&tony]

Hi
Wow...and double WOW...someone knows how to print money...I could put you in touch with a vet here , and you could fly an animal here, have the operation on said animal, spend some time at a hotel, fly home and have change...The vets here are as good as the UK...well trained, and caring...more than can be said for general human medicine, which is 40 years out of date, and expensive for what you get.
Sincerely....the vets here are far better than some UK practioners I've been to!!!!!!!
Someone in the veterinary world is teaching how to extort money
Cheers
Helen

[scanner]

animal friends. Worth every penny,

Good luck if you ever have to claim*.


*See my post and how my daughter's dogs came to be uninsured..

[Dr Fingers]

When I said 'worth every penny' I was referring to pet insurance in general, and Tesco's in particular, in my experience, at least.

We only switched from Tesco because the quote for the new dog rocketed after they had to pay out £4.5k on her predecessor (RIP Oscar, English Springer, my best ever mate )

Have not had to claim against Animal Friends yet: sorry to hear of your problems, but let's face it, Insurance companies do not want to pay out and will do almost anything to avoid doing so..

Derek

[scanner]

When I said 'worth every penny' I was referring to pet insurance in general, and Tesco's in particular, in my experience, at least.

We only switched from Tesco because the quote for the new dog rocketed after they had to pay out £4.5k on her predecessor (RIP Oscar, English Springer, my best ever mate )

Have not had to claim against Animal Friends yet: sorry to hear of your problems, but let's face it, Insurance companies do not want to pay out and will do almost anything to avoid doing so..

Derek

I hope you never need to rely on Animal friend's interpretation of 'worth every penny' and find out if switching was "worth the saving".

The same as any shop can quote the cheapest price when they don't have any stock, some insurers can quote cheaper premiums if they don't intend to pay out if they can possibly help it.

[helen&tony]

Hi
Reading this thread reminds me of how the practices work in the UK.
When one of our dogs needed treatment and an operation, the insurance paid up. It was explained that at that time (quite some years back -11 years, from memory), that many practices were owned / funded by the insurance companies, as it is expensive to set up a practice or animal hospital. Therefore, the surgeries can set large fees, set up by the insurance companies, knowing full well that people will likely need an insurance to pay any fees should an event need surgery of extensive treatment, and therefore, the insurers can dictate the treatments given in a particular event, as they are the ones funding, and will choose the option of more expensive regimes. They will , of course, recoup their money from high insurance fees, and the fees for everyday visits for such as advice and injections. The crunch comes when they increase the insurance premiums after an operation, and they reduce the cover, so that their so-called premium cover is DEFINITELY NOT for life. I found out a few years after my dog's operation, that he needed another one...same condition, different area, and according to the vet, not associated with the first episode. Treatment went ahead, and the insurers tried to get me to pay some towards it!...
As an indication of how the insurance companies set the treatment that is performed within their practices, we have annual injections here for the dogs, as set by EU regulations for dog passports...however , over here they're required by law anyway...cost per dog of rabies injection?????...about £7.00. I asked why only the one injection, whereas the UK has around 2 or 3...The vet here says that they use a multi-vaccine, common elsewhere, as the UK uses 3 so they can charge more per annual treatment...so how much does that lot cost in the UK????????
The system needs changing in the UK...insurance companies owning treatment centres is extortion....some might say a conflict of interest, where shareholders interests are put above the interest of an individual client who may prefer not to insure!!!
Cheers
Helen

[roosmith]

This seems like a crazy conversation and I don't mind saying. Personally I think it should be a legal requirement like it is for a car now. If you own a dog you should have insurance. Our last dog racked up nearly £10,000 in his life time of vets bills. I can't comment on insurance owned surgeries but our local one isn't, I know the owners. Our dog racked that up through pretty standard things. As he got old he had a few complaints that needed investigating, scans etc cost a lot of money, simple. If he didn't have insurance he would have to have been put to sleep years earlier than he eventually did because of cost.

Whether the premiums are justified is another matter but in our case pet plan still haven't made their money back, even with a new dog with them!

Oh and we didn't have any issues with then paying at all.

[scanner]

Whether the premiums are justified is another matter but in our case pet plan still haven't made their money back, even with a new dog with them!

That is the company everybody involved in my daughter's problems said she should have used.

[helen&tony]

Hi
I'm glad you have had good luck with your insurance.....and, quite frankly, I always insured, and was happy to do so, and, yes, I had a fair bit back...but the situation most definitely changed in favour of the "business side" of insuring....by the same token, I believe that if you consider pet insurance should be compulsory, then so should health insurance, so that the NHS doesn't have to shoulder the burden of those who can afford to insure. In all ways, there is a responsibility to your animals, and had I not got insurance, I'd sell house and home for my animals...
Regarding being a senseless discussion, far from it...there is a need to do something about the ridiculous price of keeping animals, when their treatment seems to parallel the cost of human treatment, but without the huge army of medical staff needed for human care....Veterinary fees have gone to ridiculous levels , it seems, with a few practitioners struggling honestly on the edge, while insurance companies sit on a "sure thing"
Cheers
Helen

[roosmith]

Hi
I'm glad you have had good luck with your insurance.....and, quite frankly, I always insured, and was happy to do so, and, yes, I had a fair bit back...but the situation most definitely changed in favour of the "business side" of insuring....by the same token, I believe that if you consider pet insurance should be compulsory, then so should health insurance, so that the NHS doesn't have to shoulder the burden of those who can afford to insure. In all ways, there is a responsibility to your animals, and had I not got insurance, I'd sell house and home for my animals...
Regarding being a senseless discussion, far from it...there is a need to do something about the ridiculous price of keeping animals, when their treatment seems to parallel the cost of human treatment, but without the huge army of medical staff needed for human care....Veterinary fees have gone to ridiculous levels , it seems, with a few practitioners struggling honestly on the edge, while insurance companies sit on a "sure thing"
Cheers
Helen

I do agree with most of your points, however of course insurance is in favour of the business side of things, they are after all a business. They're not a pet charity, they are in it to make money. Of course there is a balance to be had between making money and ripping people off and unless we're on the inside we'll probably never know. If the figures are to be believed that the insurance companies trawl out every time one of them is in trouble for charging too much, they're all doing it at a loss

On your last point, I'm not best placed to know what the actual costs of veterinary care are and if they are proportional to what we pay. The trouble with comparing it with human care though, is the general public don't see the real cost of that either. They complain about paying over £7 for their prescription, when most of the meds they are on cost many times that, let alone a stint in hospital. Is it just that as we actually have to pay the full cost of pets medical care, we actually come face to face with just how much it costs?

I think my initial reply was born out of the belief that (and not directed at anyone in this discussion, as everyone seems to be taking ownership responsibly) owning a dog/pet is easy and a part time, cheap past time.

An example of an illness that would have finished my last dog off, if he didn't have insurance, was he was out walking (on a lead) and was sniffing about, nothing unusual, but he came out of the verge with a dead rat in his mouth. It was fished out immediately and he didn't seem to ingest anything. Within hours though it was obvious he had and the rat was either poisoned or just diseased. This was his evening walk so by the time he was vomiting uncontrollably, it was a job for the emergency vets in the middle of the night. God knows how much that one set of treatment cost, he was in over night on a drip and came home on a course of meds. Even putting money by each month wouldn't cover one of those incidents in a dogs life time, let alone a few of them.