What are pre-existing conditions and why are they important?
When it comes to pet insurance, one of the words that is heard the most is “pre-existing condition” and that they aren’t covered.
What is a pre-existing condition? In the simplest terms, it’s a condition that occurs before you get insurance on your pet. So, if your pet was diagnosed with diabetes before you got insurance, they wouldn’t be covered for any treatment for diabetes. Now, it’s my belief that many pet insurance companies may tend to take the ‘pre-existing’ clause a little too far. As I’ve heard many upset pet owners who don’t have a condition covered because the company deemed it pre-existing.
All to often I hear or read a story online about an angry pet owner who had paid into a pet insurance policy for, say, 5 years to have their pup fall ill and to not have the illness covered because the insurance company linked the illness to some small symptom that the dog showed as a 10 month old puppy.
Has something like this ever happened to you?
Was required by the shelter to get pet insurance, and of course it didn’t cover her pre-ecisting condition. So paid it for a year and dropped it as it was useless as much of her vet care concerned her conidtion.
Zoey – I’m very interested in how a shelter required you to get pet insurance. I’ve never come across or heard of such an instance. Out of curiosity, how old was your pet when you adopted her? Was the shelter upfront with the condition that she had? What was the condition?
We have pet insurance for our dog and recently had a claim denied due to pre existing condition. She had an outbreak of skin allergies, the first ever. I guess on her shelter intake paperwork 4 years ago they noted “possible” skin allergies, so now the insurance won’t cover this bout of allergies. I am trying to dispute the denial based on the “possible” noted in the paperwork, but they are giving me the run around. I am also trying to dispute it as she has never had allergies for four years we’ve had her, so likely whatever she had at intake at shelter was not allergies, maybe some type of abrasion on her neck from collar or something. In the past, however, the insurance has covered most of our claims without a problem and pays for itself and then some. Our dog is very busy@!
Hmm..of course without knowing your pup’s full medical history it would be hard for me to make a judgement call, but that does seem a little fishy! What I’d be curious is that ever you adopted your dog, I’m assuming you then took her to who is now your regular vet, and did the vet make any note of skin allergies at that time? If the vet didn’t point it out, then I’d say you have a pretty strong argument and I hope that it works out for you! However, I am happy to hear that your company has worked for you needed them — and of course not happy at the same time that your poor busy gal has had some medical problems;).
I have Pet Insurance for my two dogs. One was a rescue girl who needed surgery on her eyes for entrophy (? sp). She had it before we got her, so the insurance company didn’t cover the $1200 + cost of the surgery and after care.
We are also going through a claim for the 2 year old who is having severe allergies. I am waiting for our vet to send records showing that this is not pre-existing. If they do not cover this one, then I am done with Dog Insurance. I would rather put some money in a savings account for them. It would be much easier and probally cheaper.
Danie,
You will have to let us know the outcome of the allergy situation. If the vet doesn’t think that they were pre-existing, and hadn’t noted anything to that nature in you pup’s file, well then (fingers crossed) those darn allergies better be covered!
Before you write pet insurance completely off, however, you might want to take a look at this pet insurance review site and read more about specific pet insurance companies, and what customers have to say about them.
Best of luck!
When we rescued our cat from a trucking terminal 2 years ago, we asked our vet about pet insurance. They told us not to bother. Because she was a rescue and we didn’t have a complete history on her, the pet insurance company would most likely claim everything that she would be treated for could be pre-existing. Waste of money, they said. We listened.
Hey Penny,
That’s actually really interesting to hear that suggestion from your vet. Most pet insurance companies will (should) go off of any vet records available, and if there aren’t any, they have no way of proving “pre-existing”. It actually might have been in your favor that there weren’t many records available. I rescued my Goldie when she was about 1 year and a half, and because she was found as a stray the only records available were ones that were created during her time in the shelter. Now that I have insurance, she’s covered for everything because I think the only things in her records was a cold and her shots and spay. Hopefully you haven’t had any major problems to worry about anyway!