Pet Health Insurance ý Make Sure You Know What Youýre Getting
When you get a pet you need pet health insurance. You almost certainly know that. And you probably know that if you donýt get insurance you could find yourself faced with huge vet bills or, even worse, being unable to afford vet treatment for your pet.
But what you may not realise is how many different types of pet health insurance cover there are. So when you are taking out your policy, you have to look carefully to make sure it covers what you need. Otherwise, you could have wasted your money.
So what are the main levels of cover you could be looking at?
1. Claims are limited per condition for one year. Suppose the limit is ý4,000 per condition and your pet developed a serious medical problem such as a tumour that cost ý4,500 initially to treat. The insurance would pay ý4,000 leaving you to pay the remaining ý500. If your pet needed any further treatment for that condition next year, you would have to pay that yourself. But if he developed a different condition in a subsequent year, the policy would again pay up to ý4,000 (provided the insurers agreed that the condition was totally unconnected with the first one.)
2. Another type limits the claim per condition and per year. In this case, if your pet developed a problem costing ý4,500 to treat and the limit was ý4,000, you would again pay ý500 with the insurance paying the rest. However, if further treatment was needed for that condition in subsequent years, the policy would continue to pay out up to ý4,000, and so on as long as it was necessary. If the pet developed a different condition as well, the insurance would pay out up to ý4,000 per year for that condition as well.
3. A third type of pet health insurance imposes a maximum pay-out per condition, regardless of the time frame. Suppose the maximum per condition was ý10,000 and your pet developed a tumour that cost ý4,500 in the first year and ý4,500 in the second year. The insurance would cover these in full, but this would only leave ý1,000 for subsequent treatment for that condition, after which you would have to meet the cost yourself.
These are the main types of limitation ý there may be other variations, but you get the picture. If your pet developed an incurable condition such as renal failure or diabetes, only type 2 would enable you to cope with this financially over the lifetime of the pet. Even if you had to top up the payment one year, you would still be able to claim again in subsequent years. So this is really the only type that can truthfully be called ýlifetime coverý ý as long as it doesnýt impose an age limitation as well.
The problem is of course that most pet health insurance policies claim to provide ýlifetime coverý so you have to check carefully what is actually on offer. Obviously, the more comprehensive the cover, the higher the premiums. If you canýt afford the most expensive cover, at least make sure you read the small print so that you know what you are getting and donýt only find out when itýs too late.
Sean Horton is a Director of www.petquote.co.uk who provide comprehensive and affordable Pet Health Insurance
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