What Should a Pet Health Plan Include?

 

Learn what a pet health plan should definitely include. When you compare pet insurance you will have the choice of policies paying for more than just basic coverage.

A pet insurance policy should pay for unexpected accidents and illnesses in the first place. These are unpredictable events you can not foresee or plan in.

Expenses for emergency veterinary care and hospitalization or sohpisticated and costly diagnostic procedures and medical treatment can reach huge dimensions.

However, beside this basic aspect of pet health insurance plans, more and more pet owners would like to extend their insurance to cover costs of preventative and wellness procedures, such as e.g. spaying and neutering, annual vaccinations, de-worming, flea-, tick- and heart worm prevention and heart worm testing.

 

Preventative or Wellness Pet Health Issues

 

Wellness options are offered in a lot of pet health plans. Their integration into a policy varies. So you need to know, in what way they are included: clearly visible on top of the basic premium or more obscured and difficult to identify.

 

Read the Small Print of Your Pet Health Plan

Disappointment will most likely come up, if you miss important small print in a policy you are looking to purchase. Be sure to get answers to exactly which wellness and preventative procedures are covered and which not in a policy.

Also, watch out for age-related limitations and up to when such procedures can be carried out. (E.g. spaying and neutering within the first year of your pet's life, etc.)

You will be able to calculate better, if a pet health plan offers preventative and wellness options that can be purchased as an additional part to the basic premium.

This lets you decide, if it is worth to invest into a higher monthly premium for procedures that can be prearranged and money put aside for.

 

Drop Parts of a Pet Insurance Policy Later?

 

• Make sure that there won't be any limitations for the case you would like to add it on at another time again.
• Ask, if you will have any disadvantages regarding your basic cover, when you want to add it on again.

 

”Comprehensive” Pet Health Insurance Plans

If wellness coverage is thoroughly integrated into your premium, it will be difficult to see how much you pay actually for it and in fact how well you benefit from it.

If you compare pet insurance you may have seen offers from pet insurance companies, which state that purchasing wellness and preventative cover will be extra beneficial for you: you are apparently getting paid out more than you have to pay monthly for your comprehensive premium.

This is tricky, because pets require during their first year of life usually more wellness procedures, than in following years: spay or neuter surgery can be done only once in a pet's life. Basic immunisation (normally 2 inoculations within 2 -4 weeks) takes place usually when a pet is around 8 – 12 weeks old.

Ask, if you have got the possibility to purchase a more basic and cheaper coverage at a later time without facing the problem of exclusion of existing health conditions, which your pet may have developed during its life so far.

This would mean they are not covered any more in a new or different policy.

Reference: Dr. Kenney, Doug: "Your Guide to Understanding Pet Health Insurance", 2009 Philo Sophia Publishing, Memphis, TN

Read more about pet health plans and their exclusions.