Pet Insurance and Older Pets
Since pet health insurance is a fairly unfamiliar concept in North America, most people don’t find out about it until it’s too late. More than likely, the pet has a large injury or serious illness costing the pet owner a couple hundred to a thousand dollars, forcing them to look into pet insurance for future incidents. As one would hopefully pick up on, you can’t buy insurance for your burning house and hope that it’s covered, just like you can’t get insurance on your injured pet and hope that it’s covered. What’s worse is that whatever incidents that have occurred in the pet’s life up to the point of insurance will most likely become pre-existing conditions, creating more exclusions in the pet’s policy.
With most pet insurance companies, they will limit the age of enrollment. The age limit is typically around 13 to 14 years old, but can be as low as 9 or 10 years old. Do you think this is fair? Do you think that it’s in your best interest? If you’re willing to pay the money, why won’t they take it?
If you were, dare I say, fortunate enough to start paying on an insurance policy when your pet was young, and needed the insurance to pay out when the pet was nearing seniority, did you get what you were expecting? What we’ve found in many cases was that many people stick with their existing company as the pet ages because they have the, sometimes misleading, notion that all of that money they have put in will pay off. When the truth of the matter is that the exclusions to each policy renewal grow with ‘pre-existing’ conditions from the policy term before. Has this happened to you? Did your poor pet, for example, get diabetes when he was 4 and you thought “way to go self, you were smart enough to get insurance when Dilbert was 2” but in the end found out that the diabetes were only covered for a year and then became ‘pre-existing’? We want to hear your stories of pet insurance with older pets, suggestions, comments, etc.
A couple years ago I got pet insurance for one of my cats, who was just a kitten at the time, and wanted to get insurance for my older female cat, but she was 11 at the time and so they told me that they would not insure her. I was sad about this because I really wanted the security of knowing that she would be insured. Still, they wouldn’t let me. Shouldn’t a potential customer be allowed to buy health insurance for their pet, even if it means paying a high premium?
Hi Julie — Way to go on getting insurance for your one cat when they were still a kitten. That is the best time to get pet insurance because you won’t have to worry about pre-exsiting conditions later on.
That’s unfortunate that the pet insurance company you looked into wouldn’t insure an 11 year old cat. There are companies that will insure pets older than 11 years old, but you may have to do some research as insuring an older pet will often mean decreased coverage. Some companies have exclusions on olders pets, and all insurance companies won’t cover those pre-existing conditions. That is, any incidents or conditions that have occured in your cat’s life up to this point.
I just got Freckles (aged 15) insured with Pets Best http://www.petsbest.com/Default.aspx as they don’t have an age limit but still offer full coverage for slightly higher premiums for older cats. They also have a good way of dealing with chronic conditions. They have a per illness limit so if your cat gets diabetes or something when they are younger you can keep claiming for several years til you hit the limit. For the plan I got for freckles the limit is $14,000 so thats pretty good and their rates are reasonable. They’ll also accept you if you have a preexisting condition and just that will be excluded from the policy which is good as often that will exclude you from getting any coverage at all.
Freckles – Thank you for your comment and good for you for finding a company that will insure a 15 year old! Please keep us informed on how insuring an older pet works out for you!
I just read in a previous post that there is someone who has been paying for PetsBest & has not received payment, nor been able to speak with a customer service rep. My suggestion is to have a separate rating catagory so that we don’t have to read every single catagory to see comments/rating of particular & specific companies.
Also, are you able to see if certain emails are “planted” to falsely advertise?
Hi Rocky,
As with most services, or even products, there will of course always be positive and negative experiences. We want to encourage both types of stories on this blog so that we can do our best to inform all readers as well as improve the pet insurance industry.
That said, we don’t have any type of rating system in the works, as this blog is meant to be more of an informative blog as opposed to a means for a pet owner to be guided towards choosing one company over another. If a particular company gets mentioned, that’s just how it’s going to go.
And to answer your question, no, there is no real way for us to verify whether or not comments posted are “planted”. Anyone with an email address and access to the internet can post on here. That said, due to the nature of the blog, which holds the welfare of pets in the highest regard, we would certainly hope that people join in the conversations in order to promote an informative discussion, and not to promote a company.
Regarding health insurance for your pet/pets. I am looking into getting it for my “Ana”. She is 4 years old and I figure if I get it earlier enough I won’t have to worry about coverage down the road.
I first obtained health care for my “Nala” who was going on 13 yrs. of age. After submitting the premium, my “Nala” came down very sick all at once and ended up with mega problems in just two weeks. I even took her to Tuft’s University, (who are just fantastic). Unfortunately, I put in a claim and nothing was covered. So, I am looking thoroughly into all Pet Insurance until I am pleased.
Rosanne,
Good for you for thoroughly looking into pet insurance! Many people get angry at pet insurance companies (down the road) after they’ve gotten the coverage, and tried using it. While many people are justified in their anger, there are also many times where you have the roll up the newspaper and bop your own self on the nose for not doing thorough research or reading the policy and making sure your questions are answered;-)
I’d like to offer you two tools for comparing pet insurance coverage and comparing consumer ratings for pet insurance.
Best of luck with both Nala and Ana!