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Pet insurance (again)


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If you seriously want to understand the pros and cons of different pet insurance policies (vs. just reading anecdotal "worked great for me" / "I got ripped off" stories), here are a couple of useful links I just came across, courtesy of Lisa B's dog-li-ness blog (yeah, yeah, so you caught me reading dog blogs again):

 

Which insurance plan is best for your dog? (urbanhound)

 

http://www.petinsurancereview.com/

 

I'm a bit suspicious of this second link as there is no information at all about who runs the site, but at least it provides some good advice about choosing between plans, and links to many of them.

 

What Lisa B originally pointed to was this:

 

consumerist: sicko, for pets!

 

which is basically a bunch of anecdotal comments, but buried among them were the links above.

 

Personally, I still feel that self-insuring is right for me, but I will gladly acknowledge that there may well be some people for whom an insurance policy is a better option. If you are one of those people, you may find the above links helpful.

 

An educated consumer is a happy consumer (or at least that's the way it would be in an ideal world...).

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JUST SAY NO TO PET INSURANCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Have you looked at how bad the People health care is? Insurance companies just drive up prices even quicker. Vets start to think, “oh the insurance company pays for this, so we just charge them.”

 

The cost of all things for pets is going up because more people are willing to pay.

Soon we will have to give up their StarBucks coffee to afford vet care and dog food.

 

Seriously, if you can put away the $50-100/mo you would pay the insurance company in to even a modest fund, you are better off.

Call your vet and ask for a quote for the all the issues you think will happen? In CA, foxtails are a problem, and you may be in for surgery yearly if you work your dogs in fields.

If you can, try to hold $3000-5000 depending on how many dogs in a nice "vet" fund.

 

I had a horrible year for vet bills in 2006. I was in every month with some thing. I only have three dogs. I took what I would have paid for 2 years, 3 years, and 4 years for my dogs in insurance versus what I paid out to the vets and was only $100 in the hole. Now had I done Chemo, I would have been much more in the hole, but had they done the surgery right and gotten the entire tumor out the first time I would have not been in the hole at all. Brought him home and said, "There is still a bump".

 

But my point is not to let insurance companies get rich off your dogs. Please Try to Self Insure!!!

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And let's be clear about what self-insuring means:

 

1.) have money budgeted for reasonably forseeable needs and a reserve (credit or savings) for unforeseen needs.

 

2.) be prepared to make some hard decisions. Is it worth $10,000 in chemo, radiation, and hospitialization to keep a sick dog full of cancer alive for six more months? If so, how am I going to pay for that -- is it worth taking out a home equity loan?

 

3.) Implied by (2) but bears repeating: talk to your vet about prices of services BEFORE the procedures are done. Discuss options, get second opinions, and try to inform yourself about your dog's needs.

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