Is Pet Insurance Worth the Cost?

I get questions all the time of owners asking if it is worth getting and how the insurance works. First, I think that you need to understand how much pet care costs. If you go out and get a new pet you will be spending about $1960 for the puppy and $1265 for the kitten on start up costs and wellness care for the first year of life–and this doesn’t include the price of the pet. You will obviously be spending more if your kitten gets an upper respiratory infection or your puppy eats a sock and needs surgery to go and retrieve it. For those of you with healthy adult pets already at home you can plan on spending between $500-$700 a year for routine health care.

Pet insurance is not exactly like our human insurance. The owner of the pet must pay for the veterinary services up front and then is reimbursed by the insurance company. Most companies have coverage that includes routine care, accidents, and illness. Companies vary based upon cost of premium, annual reimbursement amount, coverage of preexisting conditions, and issues related to breed (breed predispositions). You have to do a little bit of research to find the company and plan that is right for you and your pet.

To determine if insurance would be beneficial for your situation you should consider how much money you are able to budget on an annual basis for your pet, keeping in mind that $500-$700 that I mentioned earlier for healthy pets. The other question to ask yourself is if your pet were in an emergency situation would you be able to come up with at least $2000-$5000 to pay for your pet’s care? Depending upon your answers to the above questions pet insurance may be the right choice for you.

An example of a wellness plan from an insurance company includes an annual reimbursement for routine care of $400. That means you would only have to come up with $100-$300 out-of-pocket instead of $500-$700.

An example of how an insurance company might help out in an accident: A puppy eats a sock and needs surgery to remove the sock from his stomach. The cost of the surgery is about $1866 and the insurance company will reimburse you $1139 in covered expenses. That leaves $727 out-of-pocket costs.

For more information about pet insurance talk to the staff at your veterinary clinic or check online.

Recovering puppy photo from Alxxxxxxxxxxxx’s photostream.

–Dr. Wohlwend
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Dr. Wohlwend is a small animal veterinarian in Renton, WA and a regular contributor to Wag Reflex.



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