Old Dog Needs $6,000 Surgery. What Do You Do?

[DeschutesRiver]

119. I have Petplan - regardless of which company you get, I urge you to research pet insurance

Bought insurance for both my dogs for the first time ever. One was an elderly rescue english pointer mix. Her premium was around $300 something, and she had a tendon issue and unrelated MCTs that I listed as pre-existing conditions (well, those were the biggies). A bit higher premium for my younger purebred GSP rescue, who still has never had any claims so far. I did it after yet another elderly dog succumbed to cancer, and after incurring pretty big bills in the last year of his life (and remembering some pretty big bills at the start too, however which enabled him to live for almost 16 years as though he'd never had any issues). In the last 5 years, several of my dogs and cats got old and passed away from various illnesses and having all that pile up in a short period of a few years made me think about insurance. I was on the fence about insurance, but figured what the heck could it hurt? I could always cancel if it wasn't worth it.

Anyway, a few months later, my girl had surgery where a new cancer type/location was found, and a new location for a new MCT. Paid promptly by Petplan. However, we had another claim that was improperly denied, so we went through their appeals process (took longer than I liked), and they reversed their denial after review and paid that claim as well. The total paid out by Petplan for my girl was in the thousands. The diagnosis for my girl was so dire and advanced that given her advanced age, we did not opt to do any further cancer treatment, even though Petplan would have been there paying their percentage up to our chosen limits. Given her multiple health issues and the gravity of these two cancers, further treatment would have made her remaining months miserable simply so that we could love her a bit longer. They also paid for the second opinion I got, and the other specialist I took her to just to be sure I really did have no options. My girl lived in the moment, as all dogs do, so I opted to let her have as many quality moments as possible without chemo/rad/whatever and she lived another 6 months with our vet helping us with palliative care items. It helped to have insurance cover part of this, and to know that I decided what was best solely based on her needs/quality of life, and not because I couldn't afford something she needed.

If their service ever goes south, I will try to find another insurance to use. I am retired too, and just wasn't sure if this was a smart thing or a stupid thing to do, but the cost of the insurance simply pales next to how much it costs for some injuries/accidents/illnesses that are completely survivable for your dogs/cats IF you have the money to cover them. And sometimes like in my case, it costs a bunch just to end up finding out that there is nothing further that can be done other than palliative care. I don't know if I will be able to afford insurance for them forever, but I plan to buy it now until either I can't afford to do so anymore or until I have a bad experience with the insurance (and can't find any better company). I look at it this way - I would have been out of pocket for nearly $4000; instead, that kind of cash could pay for premiums for quite a few years if I choose to do so. Insurance is there for random events; yes, if you never have them happen, it seems like a waste, and if you do, it is a blessing. And companies can be great or just mean about paying claims - that is random too. But currently, I am a fan of pet insurance (and surprised to be saying that too, after having pets for decades without such things).

When I was researching this, I spent weeks reading reviews of every pet insurance company out there, both good and bad ones. There were bad reviews for Petplan in some places, even though my experience is overall very good at this point (have used them for 2 years now and plan to be paying for year 3 shortly here, even though the last year was without claims for both boys). There were things Petplan covered that others didn't; and vice verse. In my case, I picked them in part because if you had your vet certify that your dog had great knees, etc, they would cover any knee issues very early in the policy period (others had a year waiting period before covering things like acl surgeries, etc), and my dogs are really athletic, so that was important to me. OTOH, my dog breed/mix of choice rarely has genetic issues (or if they do, they aren't survivable for long), so I didn't care if a policy had exclusions for anything like that. And so on. I figured that if I didn't like having insurance, found it unnecessary, burdensome financially or a continued fight to get claims paid, I would cancel and apply for a refund.

Anyway, just narrow it down to a few plans that might work for you, know the limitations of each plan and decide if that would work for you and your cat's individual needs and give it a try. And if it isn't working out as you expected, cancel it for a refund. When my girl passed away, we called Petplan to notify them and we got a refund as of her date of death to the end of that year's policy period. They have always been professional, kind and straight forward when we've dealt with them on the phone, which is a big deal for us too.

Sorry for the length of this but best of luck in seeing if you can find a pet insurance plan that makes sense for you, and best wishes for good health for your kittehs~!