Health insurance for pets makes financial sense for many pet owners. For others the monthly premiums can actually cost more than veterinary expenses. But what if an emergency occurs? How do I determine if it will save me money? Where can I compare pet insurance?

What is Pet Insurance?

Companies offering veterinary pet health insurance plans have become a well-established part of the pet care industry. These companies offer insurance for all types of animals, including dogs, cats, birds and even exotics. There are a variety of different health insurance options available to you as a pet owner and many are customizable for each pet.

But, the cost of monthly premiums increase as you customize plans and add additional coverage. So is pet health insurance really worth it? The answer requires that you take a close look at veterinary expenses and confront the health risks of your pet.

Compare Pet Insurance – Calculate Veterinary Costs and Assess Risks

Most pet health insurance companies will not reimburse you for routine care. Others offer a wellness type plan for annual checkups. To determine if you should purchase a wellness pet health insurance plan, add up annual exams, vaccines and flea treatments. Or ask your veterinarian’s office for a price list to use to calculate your yearly veterinary expenses. Then you can compare this with the annual premium.

The majority of pet insurance companies will only cover expenses related to accidents or illness. This serves to keep premiums low and can give you financial peace of mind should an unexpected catastrophe occur. And beware that some plans have breed specific illness exclusions, such as hip dysplasia in German Shepherds.

Pet Insurance Review – Read the Fine Print

Every pet health insurance plan is different. Even the basic plans vary in coverage and exclusions. Some plans cover 100% of your veterinary expenses, others only 80%. Many companies issue reimbursement based on the actual bill, while others will use benefit schedules that may be out of date. A careful review of your needs will help you determine what plan is suitable for you and your pet.

Jennifer Stoewe

Pet owner #1 purchased a pet insurance policy that had a $1500 per-incident maximum. When his dog got sick and the bill was more than $1500, he couldn’t afford to pay for his treatment and had the dog euthanized. His conclusion was that pet insurance wasn’t worth it, and in the future he will just put money aside in a savings account rather than pay that money toward a monthly insurance premium.

Pet owner #2 purchased an insurance policy and her dog got very sick 2 days before the policy renewed. Because the policy didn’t cover chronic conditions (those illnesses that last longer than one policy term), when the policy renewed, the condition was considered pre-existing and wasn’t covered the next year. She also concluded that she would invest the money she had been paying for insurance in a savings account to be used for her pet’s healthcare expenses.

Neither of these pet owners did the necessary research to make a wise choice when purchasing pet insurance. I am of the opinion that if pet owners educate themselves about pet insurance and research enough prior to purchasing pet insurance, then there would be very few negative reviews written. People would know on the front end what the limitations were of the policy they purchase.

If your pet should get sick with a serious illness that involves surgery and/or hospitalization, it can literally cost multiple thousands of dollars. This is why you buy insurance – to help pay for unexpected and unplanned veterinary bills that you otherwise could not afford. Therefore, it doesn’t make sense to buy a policy with a $1500 per-incident limit.

I discourage pet owners from purchasing a policy with a “per-incident” limit, but if they do, I advise to purchase the highest per-incident limit they can afford. Anytime you see “per-incident,” it is just another way the insurance company uses to limit its reimbursement to you. It is better to purchase a policy with an annual limit and no per-incident limit.

For example, if you had a policy with a $10,000 annual maximum and a $1500 per-incident limit, and your dog got sick with pancreatitis, the coverage for pancreatitis is limited to $1500. You would still have $8500 of coverage for other conditions that might occur during that policy year. However, if there wasn’t a per-incident limit, the pancreatitis could be covered up to the full $10,000 limit as long as there weren’t any other claims made against the maximum limit that year.

Pet owner #2 could have avoided the consequences of buying the policy she did simply by purchasing a policy that covers chronic conditions. Read the policy. Ask questions. Read reviews. Find resources that educate you on how pet insurance works and how to select the best policy for you and your pet.

As for opening a savings account – an emergency fund, that’s always a good idea. But, doing so instead of buying pet insurance is a bad idea. It sounds great, but what happens two months into your savings plan when you have $100 saved up and your pet gets injured or sick and the estimated costs of treatment is $2500. You’re $2400 short.

It is the tendency for individual pet owners to think, “My dog is healthy and something like that won’t happen to me.” As a veterinarian, I see it happen frequently to pet owners who are financially unprepared, and it’s for those situations that pet insurance can come in handy. That is, if you avoid doing what the above two pet owners did, and instead, make a wise choice in the policy you purchase.

Dr. Kenney

Pet insurance is a must for all those who have pets as it enables them to give better care for their pet. You may ask if pet insurance is really useful. Well, in situations where your pet can suddenly fall really sick, it’s the best thing that can help you to cover pet medical costs.

Today, treatment given for pet is significantly costlier because of the kind of technology used in treatment and general rise in medical costs. Having pet insurance certainly helps you to cover higher medical expenses in the event that you pet falls very sick or has an accident.

You can find so many pet insurance companies offering insurance coverage. How do you know which one to select? In such a situation, you need to compare insurance companies. The first thing you need to do is to make a list of insurance companies offering pet insurance in your State. The next step is to do a background check on all of them, so that you can find out which one is financially sound, popular and has been in the business for a long time. Every State has an insurance commissioner that you can check out for information on any insurance company. If there are any ethical or financial concerns on any of them, you can know about it through enquiries at the commissioner.

The next point of comparison is the rates. Every insurance company will have different rates. Compare rates between insurance company policies so that you can select one that is suitable for your budget and which at the same time provides the kind of coverage you need. You need to make comparisons on deductibles and co-pay. Deductibles are what you pay to the insurance company and the co-pay is what you will be paying to the vet.

An important point to compare is if the policy you select covers hereditary illnesses. Many companies do not, so if your pet is a particular breed or is one that succumbs to a particular hereditary illness, you need to check if it is covered by the policy you are considering. Certain companies insist that their policy taker go only to their vet.

Compare pet insurance company features to find one that is right for your requirements. Check out various features so that you can be sure what kind of policy is right for your needs and then opt for it right away.

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Which Should You Choose – Pet Health Insurance Or Pet Health Assurance?

While Pet Health Insurance versus Pet Health Assurance may seem like a play on words, it is anything but! Knowing the difference can save your pet a lot of unnecessary exposure, and save a lot of heartache, and money. The following article is a primer on their differences.

Pet Health Insurance

$15 a month makes perfect sense should your cat or dog get out and is hit by a car, or gets into a fight with another animal, as the average cost for one broken bone is $2500.

However, it should not be relied upon to restore the health of a pet that has immune or gastrointestinal disorders. Virtually all of these disorders and diseases are caused by poor quality food, water, and a lack of quality digestive aids, and supplements.

Why put your pet and your wallet through such unnecessary misery?

Pet Health Assurance

By now, you should realize that you are what you eat. If you eat poorly, in the near future, you will likely see higher taxes on “Junk Food”, just as alcohol and tobacco are heavily taxed, but what about pet food? Pet Food is the equivalent of eating fast food (junk food) 24/7 throughout your life.

In the 2004 documentary “Super Size Me”, Morgan Spurlock wanted to know what effects eating a fast-food diet 24/7 for 30 days would have on his health. Fortunately, he was smart enough to include the aid of several doctors and began with a complete physical. The doctors monitored him throughout the test.

If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. Here’s the summary: Although Morgan was determined to finish the 30 days; after just 2 weeks his health had deteriorated so rapidly that his doctors, and girl friend, urged him to abandon the experiment. In just 3 weeks, Spurlock gained eighteen pounds, and became depressed and withdrawn. He also suffered from severe headaches, mood swings and disturbing chest palpitations. All of these shocking changes take place on camera. After thirty days, he goes into liver failure.

Pet Food is Fast Food

If you take the time to study what is actually in canned or dry pet food you would never feed it to an animal that you loved and cared about. Pet health statistics bare this out: Most pets have food related allergies. Over time, these allergies develop into full-blown diseases; 50% of ALL pets over the age of 10 have some form of cancer. Why?
Cats and dogs are meat eaters. High quality meat is an essential component to maintaining their health. What little meat that is found in pet food is meat by-products, not safe for human consumption: the rest is primarily grain filler (mostly the chaff), which has virtually no nutritional value.

The majority of cat/dog food is made from grains, but cats and dogs are not grain eaters. Grains, in any quantity, should not be a part of their regular diet.

Any vitamins and minerals noted on the eye catching pet food labels is of little value and little quantity. The regulations regarding truth in labeling for pets is even worse here than for humans.

Meat + Supplements = a Healthy Pet

Meat alone is not sufficient to keep your pet healthy. Cats/Dogs need supplements such as soil-based probiotics that perform a variety of tasks, such as maintaining the proper pH, as well as to optimize the balance between good and bad bacteria in the GI tract.

Fact: The digestive system makes up 80% of your pet’s total immune system.

Alas, this fact is completely ignored by pet food manufacturers and the majority of conventionally trained veterinarians, and yet it is the cornerstone to keeping your pet healthy!

Other supplements include a specific blend of oils (to lubricate joints, skin, arteries, veins, and muscles) and digestive enzymes to help break the food down into readily digestible elements.

Cat/dogs raised on a healthy diet of quality meat and supplements are not only healthier, they live 5-7 years longer.

The author of this article is Robert Hart, the co-founder of Vitality Science, Inc., a company that formulates scientifically proven, all natural supplements to restore and maintain pet health for cats, dogs, kittens and puppies. To read more pet health articles or to learn more about their products http://www.vitalityscience.com

Robert Hart

Do you think pet insurance is worth the money? Why not look at your pet before answering. If a situation arises where your dog or puppy needs expensive high quality medical care what would you do?

In this scenario, perhaps VIP pet insurance would be very beneficial.

Understanding VIP Pet Insurance.

The pets we love so much, like us, are made out of flesh and blood. They’re susceptible to disease and accidents. For example, no matter how much we love our dogs, if they got very sick there’s just no way we could love them back into health when they’re sick. Instead, we would need either a whole bunch of cash to pay the vet or we could get the help wee need in the form of VIP pet insurance.

If you have insurance for your pet you can take care of them if there is a serious medical condition or an accident.

Is Pet Insurance Really Valuable or Is It a Scam?

Some people might question the importance of this kind of insurance. Maybe the only thing that would change their minds would be hearing from the owners of VIP pet insurance how owning the insurance saved their pets lives.

Check out forums, blogs, message boards, review sites, and product sites, and you will find a lot of unsolicited testimonials.

These are important because you can now put names and faces on the value of pet insurance.

If you read about the policy benefits on the websites you’ll see what’s covered. Call it marketing, if you will. But if you look at the stories of how pet owners were able to get the best medical care for their pets because they had good insurance policies, the value of having VIP pet insurance should become pretty obvious.

Click here to find out more about VIP pet insurance at http://www.DogObedienceTips.org

(c) Copyright – Steve Schulman. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

Recent changes to the UKs quarantine laws mean that it is now possible for you to obtain a pet passport (under the governments passport for pets scheme) and take your family pet away with you on holiday. However, before you run off down to your local travel agent and book tickets for the whole family to that exotic seaside tropical location you have always wanted to visit but have to put off because everyone else at home didnt want to leave Fido in the kennel, you might want to consider getting you and your family some travel insurance including that all important travel pet insurance.

A number of leading pet insurance providers now offer pet owners travel pet insurance to give pet owners the comfort of knowing whether they are far away in exotic places enjoying the sun and sea or closer to home enjoying the cultural delights of Europe, their pet will be insured against any illness or mishap that may unfortunately befall them.

Typically, included in the travel pet insurance is:

- x-rays
- injections
- lab tests
- prescriptions
- costs while they stay at the vet and recuperate

Keep in mind, however, that as with other types of insurance, travel pet insurance usually comes with what is known as an excess. In short, what this means is that you as the owner if the pet will be required to pay a certain amount until a threshold amount is reached. Thereafter you can claim for a reimbursement against the insurance provider. However, unlike humans, travel pet insurance premiums are usually calculated on the type of animal you have and the age of the animal. As such, it is possible to leave arranging the travel pet insurance policy until the last minute, then purchasing this online once you have decided that you will definitely be taking your family pet away with you on your family holidays!

Moreover, as with human travel insurance policies, pet travel insurance can be purchased either as annual policy or as a one-off travel policy. If you get an annual pet travel policy, this means you can take your pet with you whenever you travel one of the 25+ countries outside of the UK which the UK government currently has arrangements for the passport for pets scheme, or any of the European Union countries (which are all part of the passport for pets scheme already). Alternatively, with one-off pet travel insurance policies you need to name the country you are going to visit and the dates youll be there and the policy will only cover you for the duration and place stated.

The Best Pet Insurance – What Features You Should Look For in Pet Insurance Coverage

Choosing the best pet insurance for you and your household animals can be tricky. While pet insurance is relatively new, there are already a sizable amount of providers on the market all saying their coverage is the right one for you. So, how do you look beyond the marketing and choose the right one? It all comes down to being objective and comparing the different features.

Here are the 3 features that your pet insurance coverage should have:

1. Lifetime Continuous Coverage

One situation you’ll want to avoid is getting a coverage that won’t let you renew after your pet acquires a condition like diabetes or cancer that will require significant expenses. Just because your pet qualifies for insurance in the beginning doesn’t mean that they’ll be covered when you need them to be. The most reputable insurance companies will still allow your pet to be covered when you truly need it.

2. Your Choice of Veterinarians

Choosing insurance for your shouldn’t mean that you need to give up seeing the veterinarian that your pets have been seeing for years. If you’re going to be paying premiums each month, then you should be able to see that vet that you’ve built up a relationship with.

3. Discount For More Than One Pet

If you’re lucky enough to have more than one pet, you probably have a little bit of fear that it will be expensive to insure them all. Fortunately, some insurance companies will actually offer a discount for insuring more than one pet.This way you won’t have to choose which pets you think will need coverage more than others.

If you’re looking for more information on the best pet insurance for the pets you love, I invite you to click here and find out how other pet owners are responding to their insurance coverage.

Our pets mean a lot to us and we want them to be as healthy and happy as possible. No one wants to see their pet suffer and we often spend large amounts of money to make sure our pets get the best medical attention possible. Just like human health care, vet bills can quickly rise to unmanageable amounts. One way to hedge against these expenses is to take out a pet health insurance policy.

Illness can occur at any time, and once a problem sets in health insurance will cost much more. A policy taken out when the pet is young and healthy will have premiums much lower than if you had waited until a problem develops. This is no different than human health insurance. Premiums for pets can be as low as a few dollars a month and can be well worth the cost should your pet develop a serious disease of suffer a major injury.

Pet health insurance providers can have policies that allow you to seek care only with certain providers. If you have a preferred vet, make sure that the insurance will allow you to continue using him. Also, be prepared for exclusions for payments of certain pre existing conditions. For this reason, you should take out the policy when the pet is healthy. Also, don’t expect the policy to cover routine care such as vaccinations, spaying and neutering or flea treatments. Pet insurance is focused on serious, very costly conditions.

Once you find a company that seems to offer what you need, take some time to familiarize yourself with their copayment and deductibles. Just like with any insurance, lower deductibles often translate into higher premiums and you must way present costs against future claims. Most people prefer to take out a higher deductible to keep the monthly premiums low, but your situation might call for a hedge against higher future expenses.

Consider the possible treatments your pet may need in the future. Next combine several months of premiums along with the deductibles to see whether or not the cost seems reasonable. The lower the risk that your pet will get sick or injured, the lower the overall cost of the insurance would be. If the costs seem excessive, perhaps you would be better off providing your own pet insurance by opening a savings account or money market fund and grow it using the money you would have spent on premiums and deductibles. If your pet never gets sick or injured, you have the money to use for something else. If the pet does require medical attention, you will have the funds to pay for it.

Victor Kramb

These days, pet insurance is receiving a good deal of attention, both in the marketplace and in the media. There is a terrific reason for this. People seem to love their mammals more than ever and having health insurance pet plan is a reasonably affordable way for people to assure that their pets will be able to receive the animal welfare care that they need. At the same time, such insurance coverage helps to protect the animal lovers from financial hardship in case of major health problems or accidents with their animals.

Just like health care coverage for humans, insurance for pets can provide for peace of mind, because you will know that they are going to be taken care of in the event of an emergency. There is nothing worse than to have the four-legged family member become ill and be put in the position of having to pass on treatment or even worse, to have to put the animal to sleep because of the cost. As with all types of health care, veterinary animal care costs are increasing on a continual basis.

Securing proper pet insurance coverage can protect the owners from having to make life and death decisions. This provides a measure of peace and security and reduces the stress of the owners of family pets, leaving them with assurance that their animal will be able to received proper veterinary attention when needed.

Pet health cover makes good financial sense for most families. In exchange for a small monthly insurance premium, the greater costs of long-term or emergency veterinary pet services will be taken care of by the pet plan.

While health care coverage for people has been available for many years and is almost considered a must have for every individual and family, insurance for animals is still a relatively new option for mammal owners. For those who have many of them, it seems like a very important thing to have, since dealing with illness or accident for multiple animals can escalate costs quite quickly.

Some mammal owners who have had a pet plan from the time that they were first introduced, say they would never again be without it. They have gone through the experiences of having their animals meet with trauma, accident or serious illnesses and can attest to the thousands and thousands of dollars they saved by having good pet health insurance.

There are many different types of cover policies and prices will vary depending on how extensive your coverage choices are. It is a good idea to take a good amount of time to research the various coverage options you have and compare the costs and also the reputation of the pet insurance company.

Some pet plans will cover everything including preventative types of veterinary treatments and visits. Others cover only emergency procedures. There are even some policies that cover the cost of boarding or kenneling related to the illness or treatment, and some that will cover kenneling when the family is simply traveling or if the caretaker of the mammal is ill and cannot care for the animal. For those who travel extensively, there are also policies available that will refund your cancellation fees if you must cancel a trip because your animal fell ill.

Comparison shopping for your pet insurance coverage will help you to have a complete picture of the various options you can choose that will impact the final cost of the coverage. Purchasing animal health cover can be a wise financial investment for the long-term well-being of your family pets and can help to assure that they remain a healthy part of the family for many years to come.

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