Is pet insurance worth it?

Yes! If get the good pet insurance it will cover the annual check ups and stuff without being tooooo expensive. You just don’t want to find out you lost the pet lottery, your cat/dog/dragon/unicorn has a chronic illness and you don’t have pet insurance.

It seems like everyone I know lately has a beast that has gotten some chronic problem and wished to everything they had pet insurance. Except for one of them—she had it and was thankful.

Personally I don’t think it is. I have a small amount of money set aside for pet emergencies which I can better invest and get a better return than what the insurance provides.

Like EmpressPixie and Dynamicduo both stated, it really depends on how much you could afford to spend if you pet got sick. If you have a large amount of savings/investments behind you, you might not want it/need the insurance. If you don’t have lots of savings/investments or are unwilling to dip into those savings/investments it would probably suit you more to get the insurance.

The insurance can also provide you with some peace of mind too, knowing you’re protected if your pet becomes ill.

I have many animals and no insurance. All of the research I did on it, made me come to the conclusion it’s just not worthy of my purchase.

How much do annual checkups and maintenance care cost you? How much of those would the insurance cover? How much would you be required to pay in annual premiums?

If your pet were to be injured, or had a medical problem that could be fixed relatively simply, could you come up with $2000—$5000 for treatment?

Ultimately, it’s a gamble. How much will you pay? What are the chances that you’ll need it? How much money will it save you if you do need it?

Absolutely. My three girls are each covered under VPI.

It’s only $9/month/cat. So I pay $324 per year to have all three of my daughters fully insured.

Bladder infections and other things can easily go wrong and cost thousands of dollars. I would never ever ever ever want to be put in the position of not having enough money to properly care for my daughters!!!

Paying $324/year is worth it to know that, if anything were to go wrong, they could receive the proper medical treatment to fix their issue. :)

@girlofscience, does VPI cover routine care?

Back when my ex and I had cats together (he got custody), we had pet insurance that covered routine matinenance care.

@cwilbur: There are different plans. Mine only covers sickness/injury, but you can add on “wellness” insurance, which covers routine maintenance care as well. The cost of adding that on ending up being equivalent to what I pay in yearly routine maintenance care anyway, so it didn’t matter if I added it or not. But it sure is nice to have them covered for sickness/injury.

YES.

My roommates’ dog gets sick enough that paying for her care out-of-pocket would be prohibitively expensive for them. They have a plan where she gets routine and emergency care.

@girlofscience Do you get fully reimbursed or partially? Our cat just had a minor surgery because of an absyss, (sp?) because we hadn’t expressed her anal glands, (I know, gross!) ... Anyway, it ended up being $220 and I’m curious if the insurance would have reimbursed us all or partial?

Yeah!!!!! get a good pet insurance it will cover the annual check ups and ect. Without it, it will be way to expensive without it.

@miasmom: There are different plans you can get based on how much you’d like to be reimbursed, as well. I have the Standard Plan, which means I would have been reimbursed about 80% of that. I got this plan because my girls are all still very young and unlikely to have issues. I just wanted them to be insured before they (god forbid) develop anything that could be considered a “pre-existing condition,” which would be, therefore, not covered at all.

I plan to upgrade them to the Premium Plan in a few years, which is a few dollars more per month. With that plan, they’d be fully reimbursed.

Sigh… I’m gonna get yelled at. Yes, it’s worth it, but that’s only because vet bills are much more expensive than they were years ago, due to inflation and the vet business becoming part of the anti-free market by taking the vet insurance. In other words, vet insurance enables you to afford the vet bills, but the bills wouldn’t be so high to begin with if everyone didn’t keep getting vet freaking insurance. That’s what happened with human health care, too. That’s why a prescription eye drop can cost you over a hundred bucks. Don’t do it! That’s all I can say.

Well, its about $350 per year, with a $200 deductible. So its worth it if I think I“m going to spend MORE than $550 per year on dog health. I’m getting a puppy, so looking into it, though I think it would be worth waiting and getting pet insurance when the dog is about 5–7 years old… to cover upcoming conditions that come with old age.

@dianalauren I tend to see things the way you described, but watch out – many pet insurers will only cover your friend if she was under 2 or even younger when you began the coverage.