Hi all,
I've been seeing a lot of posts about health insurance and thought I would post my experience, in case it is of any help to anyone. I just want to say here that I'm not against inurance, but I do think that the companies do NOT make people aware of what they REALLY cover. They seem to work well for simple accidents or illnesses...ones that can be quickly treated and won't recur down the road.
Where things get dicey is if your pet is injured badly enough to need multiple treatments over time, or if your pet contracts a disease, which would require ongoing treatments. The reason it gets dicey is that Insurance policies tend to only run ONE YEAR at a time, meaning they start over FROM SCRATCH each i.e. January. So even if you have paid for a policy for 4 years in a row, and your cat never had any health problems, that history may mean nothing. Your pet could come down with something 4 years into coverage and if a treament for it is required anytime after year 5 has started, it is considered a PRE-EXISTING condition. Now these companies may say that pre-existing conditions are covered so long as the animal is symptom free for 6 months...... but that means symptom free for the first 6 months of EVERY POLICY YEAR.
this is a real world example:
my cat had a back problem in May 2004. She was treated with steroid shots, which were covered by insurance, and was fine for an entire year. In May of 2005 she had another problem relating to her back (requiring a CAT scan, back surgery and bills totalling $4000). She'd been covered for 4 years with this company. They said her condition was pre-existing. I argued that since she was symptom free for a year (they only required it to be 6 months) she should be covered. They said that the policy restarts every January and so she was technically only symptom free in 2005 policy year for 4 months and so she was denied coverage. We appealed and lost. This is the very type of thing we bought insurance for, and we got nothing. They paid the $100 for the first incident she had and we were left with the $4000 bill the following year. Good deal for them I'd say.
So be careful to read the fine print. We cancelled the policies for all of our cats...since they are indoor only, in good health right now, and don't face many risks in their day to day life, the likely cause of high vet bills, for which we would need the help, would be things like kidney disease, hyperthyroidism, degenerative disc disease, cancer....things that require treatments that may span Coverage years...and so would not be covered unless you are lucky enough that the treatment would only be needed in the last six months of each year.
Hopefully this all makes sense! I just want to save people the shock and stress we experienced!
I've been seeing a lot of posts about health insurance and thought I would post my experience, in case it is of any help to anyone. I just want to say here that I'm not against inurance, but I do think that the companies do NOT make people aware of what they REALLY cover. They seem to work well for simple accidents or illnesses...ones that can be quickly treated and won't recur down the road.
Where things get dicey is if your pet is injured badly enough to need multiple treatments over time, or if your pet contracts a disease, which would require ongoing treatments. The reason it gets dicey is that Insurance policies tend to only run ONE YEAR at a time, meaning they start over FROM SCRATCH each i.e. January. So even if you have paid for a policy for 4 years in a row, and your cat never had any health problems, that history may mean nothing. Your pet could come down with something 4 years into coverage and if a treament for it is required anytime after year 5 has started, it is considered a PRE-EXISTING condition. Now these companies may say that pre-existing conditions are covered so long as the animal is symptom free for 6 months...... but that means symptom free for the first 6 months of EVERY POLICY YEAR.
this is a real world example:
my cat had a back problem in May 2004. She was treated with steroid shots, which were covered by insurance, and was fine for an entire year. In May of 2005 she had another problem relating to her back (requiring a CAT scan, back surgery and bills totalling $4000). She'd been covered for 4 years with this company. They said her condition was pre-existing. I argued that since she was symptom free for a year (they only required it to be 6 months) she should be covered. They said that the policy restarts every January and so she was technically only symptom free in 2005 policy year for 4 months and so she was denied coverage. We appealed and lost. This is the very type of thing we bought insurance for, and we got nothing. They paid the $100 for the first incident she had and we were left with the $4000 bill the following year. Good deal for them I'd say.
So be careful to read the fine print. We cancelled the policies for all of our cats...since they are indoor only, in good health right now, and don't face many risks in their day to day life, the likely cause of high vet bills, for which we would need the help, would be things like kidney disease, hyperthyroidism, degenerative disc disease, cancer....things that require treatments that may span Coverage years...and so would not be covered unless you are lucky enough that the treatment would only be needed in the last six months of each year.
Hopefully this all makes sense! I just want to save people the shock and stress we experienced!
