Pet insurance can assist in the costs of your pet care, illness, or injury. Unfortunately, your pet can suffer an unexpected disease or injury at a moment’s notice. How much is your average pet care cost for an emergency visit? Approximately, two to four thousand on average.
Things You Probably Did Not Know About Pet Insurance
– One out of every three listed Fortune 500 companies offers pet insurance, as a healthcare benefit. Major companies, including Delta Airlines, Hewlett-Packard, T-Mobile, and UPS, now provide Veterinary Pet Insurance to their employees.
– Memberships in groups such as AAA, ARAP, and Healthy Paws offer incentives on pet insurance premiums.
– Pet insurance does not just cover cats and dogs anymore. As pet owners’ choices for exotic pets has been widespread, pet insurance companies now offer coverage for guinea pigs, lizards, rabbits, opossums, to name a few.
Three General Levels Of Coverage
With any pet insurance policy, there are three general levels of coverage, basic, comprehensive, and pet well care protection coverage. Basic pay the lowest reimbursements for procedures and have an annual deductible. Comprehensive, even though more expensive, offers coverage for office visits, medicines, tests, and laboratory cost, along with lower annual deductibles. Pet well care protection policies provides for the preventive care, physical exams, and routine vaccinations. Usually, well care policies have no deductible.
Five Components Pet Health Insurance You Should Have
Pet health insurance, like any other health insurance, should always cover core diseases. Your pet insurance policy should have coverage for cancer, chronic illness, continuous coverage for chronic illness, any inherited or congenital disorders, and coverage for medical illness particular to your pet’s breed.
Cancer treatment can be catastrophic and expensive. Make sure your pet insurance does not place a limit on the maximum payout paid for cancer treatment.
Chronic illness is categorized as an illness that has a prolonged duration, progress slowly, and likely do not have a cure. Heart disease, kidney disease, and diabetes are non-curable diseases that still require routine medical treatment and medications. Make sure your pet insurance covers routine care and treatment of chronic diseases. If not, you may need to purchase add-on coverage to cover the costs of routine care of chronic illness.
Your plan should cover genetic illnesses. Your pet insurance plan should be specific in their coverage of genetic diseases. Remember, if not specified clearly, the underwriter of the pet insurance policy determines if coverage is approved, not the pet’s physician.
Also, some policies will cover genetic illnesses; however, the plan does not include congenital health issues. Unfortunately, some congenital diseases are considered to be genetic. Make sure your policy clearly states coverage for both genetic and congenital diseases. For further information, see post on the web about pet care insurance.
Summary
As you can see, choosing the best pet insurance for your pet can be confusing and to say the least, complex. Genetic and congenital pet illnesses are the most costly of all pet care medical needs, and in some pet insurance policies can be the most confusing explanation of coverage.
Make sure you have a clear understanding of what your policy covers. Not clear? Call the insurance policy and read the plan and have them define any confusing portions of your policy. Have your insurance carrier point out and explain any exclusions. If some of the terminologies merit confusion, ask your veterinarian for assistance.
