Health Insurance
 

I was wondering how many of you have health insurance, and if you find it helpful? I've been noticing that all the policies have you pay up front, and then reimburse you?

For those of us that don't generally have hundreds of dollars laying around, what good does the insurance do then?

I guess just looking for more info from you guys on whether you like it, feel its not nessesary, etc.

thoughts? :confused:

I have it on my 2 yorkies and am very happy with it. For 22.00 a month each I have peace of mind that I can afford treatment for them and not go broke or worse yet not be able to get the help they need. I never got it on my Pom since she was an only dog for 8 years and relatively healthy, well I spent 4000.00 on her since April and she is still not better. Insurance would have helped offset a lot of the bills. I have VPI. I have used it a lot for Cali and a couple of times for Pixie. For example Pixie had 2 unrelated er visits in July, totaling about 640.00 I submitted ther bills to VPI and received a check back for 399.00. I am a big fan of it.

I've been thinking about insurance a lot lately now that i have four yorkies instead of just the two. It would help a lot with vet bills I'm sure. So VPI is one of the best that I've heard of. I'd love to get more opinions on other companies if anyone uses them.

They did a cool segment on The Today Show about 4 months ago on "should you get Pet Insurance" - the conclusion was:

** don't get it for "preventive care"
** get it ONLY IF you would NOT be able to afford a major health issue

In other words, if your dog was diagnosed w/ something that was going to cost 5k+ and you could not come up with that under any circumstance, get the insurance. IF you could somehow come up w/ the 5k+, then it makes more financial sense to pay it yourself (insurance didn't payoff in the long run for folks like that).

Kiwi has Embrace Pet Insurance and they have been great! I chose them because they covered hereditary problems and Kiwi has recently had liver issues. If she had another insurance, they would not have covered all her blood tests, trips to the vet, and a nuclear medicine scan!:eek: She had her nuclear medicine scan on the 20th and I got an email from them today saying they were sending the check out today! And they are soooooo nice! The lady that has been handling my claims sent me an email asking how Kiwi was feeling! You can completely customize your policy either with high or low deductible, high or low copay, etc. So you can control how much of a premium you want to pay.

As far as having to pay in advance, I think every pet insurance company works that way. It is kind of a bummer, but I did talk to a claims person at Embrace and they said that if someone has a signifigant vet bill, they sometimes will work with the vet's office so that you don't have to pay everything up front. But you can think of it this way, it is better to have the insurance because maybe you could borrow the money to pay the vet and when you get the money from the insurance company, you could pay the money back. It would ensure that you wouldn't go bankrupt trying to save your baby.

P.S. I forgot to add that Embrace doesn't offer preventative coverage. They believe that a pet parent can save for those expenses. They are more for accident/illness coverage.

The Embrace Insurance sounds pretty good since their willing to work with you on bigger bills. Sounds like good customer service.

I only have insurance for accident coverage, and let me tell you it has paid off. We all know Yorkies are into everything, and anything could happen. Petsbest insurance is reasonable, but you do have to foot the bill and they will send you a check within a few weeks. (they are pretty quick) The piece of mind I get is better than always wondering what could happen. Sad thing is..my dogs have insurance, my fiance doesn't lol :animal36