Best pet health insurance? Rara probably needs it...

My view of insurance is that it is extremely beneficial when it comes to accidents and injuries. Routine vet care, not worth it IMO. Case in point, my dog Piper.

I spent over $6k in vet bills over about a year & a half on her 2 TTA's plus rehab after both. I was always one of those "I'll just put away what I'd spend on insurance in an account each month".. even if I was putting away $100/month, that's only $1200/year, not even close to covering her surgeries, etc. So yeah, it'd be kind of annoying (not that you WANT to have to utilize the insurance) to drop $40-50/month on insurance and never use it. But for me, after having spent what I did, it's well worth the peace of mind.

Anyway, back to companies and such.

I'm looking into getting it for my boys, both of whom have no pre existing conditions. We met with Trupanion, Pets Best & VPI where I work and we liked Pets Best the best. VPI has all of these weird payment schedules, and Trupanion does a per incident deductible (ex. You pay a $200 deductible for a TTA surgery, then your dog eats something it shouldn't, you have to pay another $200 deductible for that surgery). Pets Best is straightforward, they cover 70, 80 or 90%, and you pick the deductible.

Embrace Pet Insurance is another good one, they're similar to Pets Best. Pet Plan is the one that I will more than likely go with though. I started working for a new clinic and they're offering a 20% discount off of your premium. They also cover hereditary conditions, which is a nice one that many companies don't. Only negative is that they're structured somewhat similar to Trupanion with the per incident deductible, which is annoying to me. Other than that, they sound like a great company.

Dang, I wish we started Trupanion with Rara as a puppy like with Siri, in this case. Starting now, it's really possible they will claim new health issues as pre-existing, even if we haven't been to the vet for it before.
And I'll run the CareCredit route by my mom.

This is good information.. I'll need to register Rara as "mixed breed", if I do (technically, she kind of is? Maybe 3 generations ago.. LOL). Thanks!
I'll always have enough money to drop on medical issues for my dogs, but it just hurts quite a bit when the issue is something larger, like a surgery.

From the looks of it, it's probably better for us to just go the savings route with Rara, with her being at her age already and a few actual pre-existing issues.

With older dogs and pre-existing issues, it's pretty much pointless to do insurance imo. I've looked into it with Mia and Summer and it's just too much to cover too little. They've already got the issues that they will likely have (or a lot of them).

With Hank I looked into it but opted against it. I just feel like I am better off using my emergency funds/credit card/care credit. If I had a bill higher than all that combined then well... it would probably be a treatment that would be more than I was willing to put my dog through anyways.

Overall, thank you for the good info and thoughts, you guys! Showing this thread to my mom.

Thanks and agreed- I believe we will just go with the savings at this point. Anything that happens to her, especially a large surgery for whatever reason, we'd be very willing to go forward with too.

At least with trupanion, your monthly premium does NOT go up just because your pet gets older.

My vet is a Trupanion Express clinic, so we're good there. Though it can be used at any vet, mine just makes it easier to use. Premium will not go up as she ages with this company.

In my mind, she could get hit by a car tomorrow (obviously lets hope she doesn't!) and have a $7,000 or more vet bill and I don't have to blink before saying DO IT! I don't have to worry about the money. It's just a non-issue. For me, that's worth $50 a month. I don't even have to think about my answer there.

I am so confused by this statement. If you mortgage out 100k, at 3.92%, for 30 years you would end up paying $170,000 when all is said and done.... That's more than half of what you originally borrowed being payed as interest. And those numbers aren't that extreme either.

what's confusing? I never intended to mean paying for pet insurance cost more than a mortgage. I was saying, paying a mortgage, I don't pay for a house 5 times over like pet insurance AND i'm getting a HOUSE out of it.

If pet insurance only made me pay 60% more than I normally would, it would make a lot more sense. 5 times as much? and then out of 5 animals maybe one would payout in any given year??? can't see how that makes financial sense at all.

Thank you everyone for your responses! This post was initially caught up in moderation and I forgot it existed since it didn't get posted right away. Just remembered as I was coming back from the vet with my other dog (routine vax).

I had started to look into companies and had bookmarked a lot of things and typed some notes into computer. Apparently when it rains it pours and my computer died and lost everything yesterday, no backups like I thought I had.

Until it gets fixed and I can see things on a non-phone screen I'll have to hold off looking for insurance since it's just obnoxiously impossible to do serious internetting on an iPhone. Am wondering overall if I might have just hit a rough patch that should "let up"- I have a failed foster in addition to the lab, a little puppy mill thing that wasn't supposed to survive past 4 months and so I kept her. She is now 17 months (definitely an awesome thing!!!!) but obviously with every weird genetic issue known to man she can run up some vet bills. Between the two I spent $800 in 5 weeks (lab chipped tooth and needed extraction, both are due for yearly physical and bloodwork in same month, she needed her last booster vax which have to be spaced and given with Benadryl, and gum incident) and so my monthly "add money to this for vet costs" fund was wiped out in those 5 weeks. Thinking (hoping!) that it was a fluke and we should be good for a while.

That being said, if anyone knows of ANY insurance that will cover preexisting conditions let me know- never was able to find one and would jump on that chance if I could get it for the little one. She has VSD, collapsing trach, luxating patellas, and cranial sublux and has been in foster at my house since 2 weeks old so they're all obviously considered very pre existing. Will have a look at the other thread someone posted above!