Six Questions to Consider in Choosing Health Insurance for Your Cat
This is a subject that is very hard to give a generalized answer. The decision to get health insurance or not depends on many factors. This has been carefully studied and this article has tried to cover the most relevant questions that have been raised by cat owners. In the end, you are the only one that can make the decision.
Before you purchase any cat health insurance for your cat or kitten there are some very important points to consider.
If you choose the wrong plan or do not take out pet health insurance at all, you may yourself be unable to afford a treatment that your cat needs later in its life.
There is no pet health insurance plan that will be perfect for every pet and owner. You will need to consider each of these questions depending on where you live, whether you have other pets and a trusted veterinary service already, and your financial circumstances.
1. If you are already using a veterinarian or have a recommendation and do not want to switch, you will need to check what pet health insurance companies they will accept.
Most veterinarians prefer to only deal with a small number of companies or even just one. There are many reasons for this but, for example, a veterinarian who is familiar with the policies of your pet health insurance company can usually recommend treatment that he or she knows will be covered.
2. Keep in mind too that sometimes family veterinarians may not have the equipment or specialist skill to carry out some treatments themselves. This could result in a referral to a specialist animal hospital or the veterinary school of your State University. Check whether the company you plan to use is approved there.
3. You will want to look at the different options available with the insurance policy. Most companies offer several different levels of cover and some are much more comprehensive than others. Usually they will cover expensive surgical procedures after an accident, for example, but they may or may not include cover for hereditary conditions or pre-existing conditions (problems that your cat already had before you took out the insurance).
4. They will often also give you a choice of deductible, which is the amount that you pay from each claim. For example you might have 90% cover where you paid 10% of each claim, or 70% cover where you paid 30%.
Of course, the higher the deductible, the lower the monthly premium that you pay, but you cannot know whether this would work out cheaper over the lifetime of the cat. Some operations and follow-up can cost a couple thousand dollars or more, so the 30% that you would have to pay could be a large sum.
5. Many plans do not cover prescribed medications, or they offer this option at an additional cost. Prescription medication can be expensive if your cat develops a chronic condition such as feline diabetes.
Some plans do not cover the cost of the visit to the veterinarian’s office, but only the treatment that is prescribed.
6. Wellness treatments are usually covered by health plans. Treatments such as vaccination shots, and spaying or neutering the cat, if this has not already been done before you got him/her.
Wellness treatments are predictable costs and the insurance will probably not save you any money here but it will spread the cost so that your budgeting is easier.
In the end, as with any insurance plan, it is a gamble. If your cat is perfectly healthy every day of its life, then you do not need insurance. But if it turns out to develop something that requires expensive surgery or frequent visits to the veterinarian, you could save a lot of money by having good insurance cover. You cannot know this ahead of time.
The best thing to do is to:
Þ Read all the papers carefully, look at what is covered in all of the different options,
Þ Think about how much you can afford to pay each month and consider how you would manage financially if your cat required something that was not fully covered in the plan.
This will help you to make an informed choice to find the best cat health insurance for you and your pet.
