Anyone Have Trupanion Health Insurance?

Originally Posted by Bunnelina

Hi,

I was inspired to do some research on health insurance for our two kittens after reading a recent thread here. I've checked out 24PetWatch (which I currently have), Pets Best, a few others. After digging around, the Trupanion company is looking like the best option. They have a web page where they compare themselves with other major companies (not including 24PetWatch, darn it).

With Trupanion, you must enroll before the cat is a year old, but your premiums won't increase as the cat ages. I like the fact that they have a $20,000 cap on coverage of any kind — a lot of insurers have a cap of $2,500 "per incident" or "per category," such as endocrine or heart issues. That would cover only about 2 years of our teenaged Persian's CRF quarterly blood tests, so those caps are too low, I feel. I have Pet's Best - yes, there is a $2,500 cap per incident on MY PLAN which is the most basic plan, for which I pay about $14.883 per each or my three cats. The Lifetime cap per pet is $42,500, on my basic plan, which trupanion forgets to mention, which is well above $20,000... The $2,500 is per incident, so on the bright side, I would only pay ONE deductible per life of that incident, no matter how long it lasted.


I'd love to hear from anyone who has experience with this company. I like the fact that I can set my deductible. With a $75 deductible, a premium is about $20/month for any age cat. Then they pay 90% of accident or illness bills, less the exam fee, and the deductible. Also, they don't cover routine exams and shots, etc., because they figure you can budget for those — they don't want to raise premiums to include that. It's insurance for "unexpected illnesses."
About the Premium above, at Pet Best, with my three cats, if I paid $21 per cat, my cap would go to $10,000 per incident, and $100,000 (5 X above Trupanion's $20,000, but they don't mention that...) for the life of the pet. There is only the deductible, ONE deductible per incident, so you never pay for a follow up exam, or for visits for the same issue - your CRF would be an excellent example. And the examination fee is included in the total price to be reimbursed to you.

It sounds good — so what's the catch?

Sometimes I wonder if it makes more sense to just put a sum of money aside in a "cat emergency health account" rather than paying almost $500 a year for emergency insurance on two cats. In 10 years, we'd have $5,000 (plus a little interest) in there, assuming the cats just needed routine care. That would be enough to cover a fair bit of care as they got older and developed issues. On the other hand, cats can get very sick at any age; insurance, ideally, should give us peace of mind that there's coverage for as much care as a cat would ever need.

I'm curious to know your thoughts. These companies have such different programs, coverage, charges, and exclusions, etc., and I'm confused. Thanks!

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Originally Posted by Bunnelina

Thanks, carolinalima! You're right, I need to find some unbiased comparison sites. If anyone knows any good ones, please give me links, and I'll post any I find myself.

I know from reading your posts over the past few months that you've been happy with Pets Best, which partly inspired me to do some comparison shopping. Thanks for your insights! I'll have to look more closely at Pets Best policies.

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Originally Posted by carolinalima


I have Pet's Best - yes, there is a $2,500 cap per incident on MY PLAN which is the most basic plan, for which I pay about $14.883 per each or my three cats. The Lifetime cap per pet is $42,500, on my basic plan, which trupanion forgets to mention, which is well above $20,000... The $2,500 is per incident, so on the bright side, I would only pay ONE deductible per life of that incident, no matter how long it lasted.
In response to this, Trupanion also has the per-incident deductible, which would be applied to the pet's lifetime of treatments. So if Jasper gets cancer, I would theoretically pay "my deductible" for cancer once, regardless if the treatments continue for 4,5,6 years.

About the Premium above, at Pet Best, with my three cats, if I paid $21 per cat, my cap would go to $10,000 per incident, and $100,000 (5 X above Trupanion's $20,000, but they don't mention that...) for the life of the pet. There is only the deductible, ONE deductible per incident, so you never pay for a follow up exam, or for visits for the same issue - your CRF would be an excellent example. And the examination fee is included in the total price to be reimbursed to you.
Subsequently, $20,000 is a LOT of money. Why would I want a $100,000 lifetime limit if I know I'm never going to get anywhere close to that? Most of my cats have only costed me their regular exam fees their whole lives and my most expensive one was IBD treatments costing a TOTAL of around $700. And it seems like extreme situations, people spend around $10K or so on treatments of any sort. I can't even fathom a pet costing much more than $20K, and at that point... what is its quality of life? Is it worth putting him through all kinds of crazy treatments?

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Originally Posted by ut0pia

The thing with trupanion is though, you'd have to pay all of the bills and wait for a reimbursement, while with pets best if you're at a tight spot where you just can't afford it, you can show the policy to your vet, explain the situation and given that you've been paying your premiums for a long time and you're obviously a caring pet owner, IMO any vet will agree to just accept reimbursement straight from the insurance company since pets best has that option.

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Originally Posted by ut0pia

I was going to mention the same thing about they have changed the under 1 year old rule, now your pet just has to be under 13.
I signed up for insurance with pets best just earlier this week, and I was really tempted by trupanion also. I looked at petinsurancereview.com and trupanion's rating was very high, even higher than pets best, although there were not as many reviews on it as there were for pets best. Most people who wrote a review were very happy with the speed at which they were reimbursed and the customer service.

And you can also set your deductible to $0, that for me put the premiums at only $21 per month.

Just don't forget the $20,000 is per lifetime, not per year like it is with most other insurances including pets best.

There was a site I was reading where a representative from trupanion was saying how out of all of their customers only 2 or 3 have reached the $20,000 limit, and it is very unlikely to happen, which I tend to agree with.

Here is the link to another third party site I was reading that has a review on trupanion with lots of comments including answers to people's questions from a trupanion representative.

http://www.petinsurancepro.com/trupa...urance-review/


The thing with trupanion is though, you'd have to pay all of the bills and wait for a reimbursement, while with pets best if you're at a tight spot where you just can't afford it, you can show the policy to your vet, explain the situation and given that you've been paying your premiums for a long time and you're obviously a caring pet owner, IMO any vet will agree to just accept reimbursement straight from the insurance company since pets best has that option.

In the past year, I was also thinking about how I should just start an emergency savings jar instead of paying so much for insurance, but that didn't really work out for me, I wasn't able to set aside much..

You also mentioned that your kitty has CRF- if that's the case, no insurance is going to cover any of the CRF bills because they will consider it a pre existing condition.

One thing this thread has me wondering is, if I upgrade my plan to the pets first or pets premier plans with pets best, will they cover any illnesses that are pre existing that occured while I was on the pets basic plan???
Carolinalima- do you have any idea?? If they do, that's an even greater peace of mind for me

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Originally Posted by ut0pia

Just don't forget the $20,000 is per lifetime, not per year like it is with most other insurances including pets best.

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Originally Posted by ut0pia

One thing this thread has me wondering is, if I upgrade my plan to the pets first or pets premier plans with pets best, will they cover any illnesses that are pre existing that occured while I was on the pets basic plan???
Carolinalima- do you have any idea?? If they do, that's an even greater peace of mind for me

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Originally Posted by Jasper_cat

Trupanion will also send checks directly to the vet if you are in a tight spot. I spoke with a representative once and she said they have done it a number of times.
But I think it really depends on your vet, because some like to be paid right away, don't trust insurance companies, etc.

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Originally Posted by carolinalima

Here is the thing: Rarely, very rarely, a young cat will have an incident that costs more than $2,500.
Now, keep in mind, an UTI, or URI, Crystals... all these that have been dealt with and cured, they can re-occur and are not considered pre-existing conditions at pets best. Chronic Diseases are.

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Originally Posted by Jasper_cat

Also though, what good does a $100,000 lifetime limit do you if it's limited to $2,500 per incident? If your cat's only serious condition its whole life is cancer, then you'd use up that $2,500 in a heartbeat and then the insurance is no good for further cancer treatments.
I like that Trupanion doesn't try to designate which funds go where, it's just "here's a big bank account for you to use if you need it". And it covers chronic conditions, doesn't consider them "preexisting" just because your policy renews each year.

Carolinalima- I can see in your website that you have a unique link to Pets Best website which I can assume that you profit from sales that go through this link. Since you're obviously trying to sell Pets Best for your own profit, I will disregard any future posts about them.

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