When you decide to bring home a new pet, making sure they’re healthy is the number one priority. The cost of caring for pets is very high as vet bills and medical procedures can be very expensive. But, with health insurance, you can lower the costs of your pet’s expenses, ensuring that your pet is well taken care of.
While pet insurance isn’t anything new, it’s become more popular and pet owners should consider insuring their pets. Pet insurance, like human health insurance, covers health costs for specific procedures and preventive care. For example, if your pet has an unknown disease and they need an expensive medication or a procedure, pet insurance can help cover it.
Why Is It Important?
Having pet insurance will make you feel at ease as you won’t have to worry about the cost of expensive treatments in the circumstance of your pet becoming ill or getting injured.
Expenses will be minimized, as pet insurance covers many medical procedures as well as regular veterinary check-ups, which means, you won’t have to worry about the costs of routine visits to the vet.
What to Know About Pet Insurance
As with human insurance, there are many types of pet policies to choose between. Illnesses and accidents are covered under basic insurance and vaccination, wellness checkups, and routine vet services are covered under wellness plans.
If you want a plan for the specific needs of your pet, you can get a customized plan. With these plans, you’ll pay an annual deductible and a premium of around $30 – $50 a month. But unlike human health insurance where your provider will reimburse you, for pet insurance, you’ll have to pay your vet visit and then apply to your provider for reimbursement.
Also, most policies have waiting periods to ensure that people don’t buy insurance to cover emergencies and then cancel their policies after. The waiting period for injuries is usually five days and for illnesses, it’s usually 14 days.
However, there are restrictions on certain breeds, ages of pets, and pre-existing conditions. So, before getting pet insurance, you need to check which breeds and conditions are covered.
Pet Insurance Providers
Pets Best: Insurance plans start at $38 per month and they include accident-only coverage. Due to the low annual maximum for its base plants, many people don’t go with this coverage.
Healthy Paws: The single, comprehensive pet insurance plan covers most situations and it doesn’t have an annual limit on pay-outs. The reimbursement depends on how much the vet bill was.
Embrace: With Embrace, you can customize your insurance plan according to your pet’s needs. The base plan starts around $9 per month for cats and $13 per month for dogs. Your pet can be enrolled for up to 14 years.
Nationwide: Formerly known as Veterinary Pet Insurance, they have three insurance plans that start at $33 per month that cover most services. The average cost is $32 per month for cats and $60 per month for dogs.
Figo: This insurance is the most flexible with three-tiered coverage. There are a couple of plans you can choose between that have annual maximums of around $10,000.
