With the recent Southern California fires and hurricane season looming, I thought it might be important to touch on how pet insurance works in the case of a natural disaster. As you might expect, when a natural disaster hits, hundreds to thousands of pets get hurt, go missing for days, or…ok, I’m not even going to say it.

While there are tons of animal welfare organizations who quickly respond to these events, they’re all still limited on funds, resources, etc.

On top of worrying about your own (people) family’s health and wellbeing, you are, no doubt, also worried about your (pets) family’s health and wellbeing. It’s no surprise that injuries and illnesses (to pets and people alike) increase during a natural disaster. On top of harm from the disaster itself, comes along stress, anxiety and often depression (again, to both pets and people).

You would naturally assume that your own human health insurance would get you taken care of (and you’re most likely right). But, what about your pets? You walk into your vet and see that it’s overloaded with sick and injured pets. Yikes. So then maybe you travel a ways to visit and stay with your favorite aunt, who is far from harm’s way.

There you take your sick or injured pet to the nearest vet and breathe a sigh of relief when they tell you they can take care of and fix up your favorite furry friend. After diagnosis, they tell you that the bill will reach somewhere around $2,000. Again, you breathe a sigh of relief because you have pet insurance.

But should you really be so relaxed?

What many people fail to do is read their policy to its entirety. Unfortunately, many companies DO NOT cover pets in the event of a natural disaster! Doesn’t seem fair, does it? And sadly, most people don’t figure this out until it’s way too late; when they’ve just been uprooted from their home, are trying to hold their family together, and just want to fix their pup or kitty!

If you’re curious, this exclusion clause is usually hidden way deep down in the section about nuclear attack or war (where most pet insurance companies also will not cover any loss). Of course most of us assume (hope) that neither of those things will ever happen. But natural disasters do!

So I would recommend that if you’re concerned about such a clause, check with your pet insurance provider to ensure that you would be covered. As an FYI, for those of you covered with Trupanion we DO cover pets in the case of natural disasters

While pet insurance is still in the process of “catching on” I hear way too many stories from pet owners all ending in “I shoulda, woulda, coulda gotten pet insurance before I was slapped with this [insert exorbitant amount of money here] bill!”

We all hear stories through the grapevine about how so and so had to spend $5,000 on their cat’s hit by car injury, or $7,000 on their dog’s cancer treatment. And what do (most of us) think in return?

“It will never happen to me!”

“Well,” I say back to those people, “please teach me your psychic ways so that I can know how to best predict the future and so that I know whether or not I will be slapped with a large vet bill and determine if I should get pet insurance or not…”

…wait…

The sad truth is that it DOES happen. And for so many people out there, it happens when it’s “too late”. If you care about your pet like a child (and I know most of us do) pet insurance should really be something you look into so that you don’t have to get a second mortgage on your house or max out your credit cards just to make sure your furry friend stays alive.

I would really like those of you who have had similar stories to share. Do you wish you would have gotten pet insurance ahead of time? Let’s try to save other pet owners from hefty vet bills!

In the meantime, check out some actual claims and associated veterinary costs.

With all of the latest pet food recalls, the most recent being recalls due to peanut butter contamination, many pet owners are asking “is this covered with my pet insurance?” or “would this be covered with pet insurance?”.

Well, the answer is (and I hate being so vague): it depends.

The answer I got from one company was that if your pet got sick due to the contamination, it would be covered. However, if you know that your pet eats one of the recalled foods, so you decide to get a liver panel done just to make sure (even though they weren’t showing any signs of being sick), and it turns out that he or she is not sick, then this would not be covered.

Essentially with this company, if the pet is sick from the contaminated food, it’s covered.

Other companies I’ve heard of will only reimburse pet owners if the pet owners could prove that they had not received any type of reimbursement for damages from the pet food company itself.

My best advice, if you’re curious or hunting around for pet insurance, is to include the question in your research: if my pet gets sick from contaminated, recalled pet food, would their illness be covered?

An interesting topic came up over the past few days under my post on Why do pet insurance policies have so many limits? about breed specific exclusions.

What are they?

Very simply, a list of coverage exclusions if you enroll a given breed. Fortunately for you pet owners, there is only one company that is doing this, that I’m aware of. The list is quite exhaustive, has just about every dog breed out there with at least 2 or 3 specific exclusions next to each. AND at the top of the list says “Please refer to your policy for a full list of exclusions that apply to all breeds, including mixed breeds”. So, buyers beware: this list isn’t even complete!

Well apparently, they have a similar list for cats! The pet owner I had been chatting back and forth with mentioned that she wasn’t even aware of the exclusions, and was shocked to find that her previously healthy kittens (as in cats who are still very young, and with few health problems) had so many exclusions. I wasn’t even aware of the list myself until she brought it up, which of course made me go do some research. It is much smaller than the dog breed exclusion list, but exists none the less.

The sad part about the whole situation, is that like Sandy, many pet owners aren’t aware of such lists until it’s too late. Now, unfortunately for her, her cats now have these pre-existing conditions so if she wanted to switch providers these things wouldn’t be covered.

I still think the whole thing is crazy. You don’t hear about “breed” specific exclusions in human health care. That’d be like saying people with fair skin won’t be covered for skin cancer because they might be more prone to it!

I’ll revert back to my mantra: if it sounds crazy, it probably is!

So now I want to hear more stories about people’s experiences with breed specific exclusions. Is there anyone out there that was aware of this list before purchasing the insurance?

I was talking to a friend the other day who had pet insurance. She made a small claim after her cat was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection and needed some antibiotics. She was surprised when she got a phone call from the company, not from a person but a recorded message, saying that they had received her claim and she could expect an answer in 2 weeks. Not payment in 2 weeks, but an answer as to whether or not it would be covered! The message went on to tell her that if her claim was approved she could expect payment in 45 days! Lucky for her, she could front the $100 something that the vet charged, but what if this had been a couple thousand dollar treatment?

Since pet insurance works on a reimbursement model what happens to people if they are forced to front the pricey bill, put it on the credit card, and then have to pay interest on their credit card until they wait for reimbursement? Is this a common situation? Has this ever happened to you?

Have you ever felt taken advantage of by pet insurance? While pet insurance has been around for many years in the US and Canada, it’s still a fairly new concept to the average pet owner. Less than 1% of North American pets have insurance. We feel that this may be in part due to the fact that people are uninformed on how pet insurance works, but more in part due to companies that over promised and under delivered.

In my research on pet insurance I’ve found that some people feel they’ve been taken advantage of by pet insurance companies by inserting a list of exclusions that the average pet owner wouldn’t understand. All the while the marketing team puts on a show about how “this is the best plan out there” or “this is the plan you need”, etc. Popular consumer pet insurance review sites show most companies at ratings of 5 out of 10. Well it’s no wonder pet insurance hasn’t fully caught on yet! We want to hear your experiences with pet insurance, but more specifically how you feel you were promised one thing and got another. Did you think those hereditary conditions would be covered? Were you expecting to get 90% of the vet bill back but only actually got 50%?