Pet Insurance Protects All the Ones You Love
A couple years back, our wiener dog, Winston, suffered a ruptured disc
in his back and ultimately lost the use of his back legs. Over the
following months, he spent several days in the hospital and also had to
undergo two very painful surgeries. It was a very trying time for my
girlfriend and I watching him drag his hind legs around and look at us
wondering what was wrong. Sheri sat in the grass and cried. I waited
till she went to bed and then sat on the porch and cried too. He is
doing very well today and you can barely tell there was ever a problem.
He is not allowed to go up and down stairs anymore and gets scolded a
little for bypassing his doggy stairs and jumping on the furniture.
We ended up spending close to $5,000 in veterinary bills but fortunately were in a position to do so. One of the many thoughts in my head was "How would it feel to have to make a different decision because 5 grand was simply out of the question?" and another was "How many people would have had to choose differently?" I began looking at pet insurance programs back then. Many of the plans I looked at had either a confusing reimbursement schedule with a specific dollar amount for a laundry list of procedures or they had a network of veterinarians that limited your ability to choose who was best suited to treat your pet. Some plans had both.
I finally found one that has no network and reimburses you 80% of the bill minus your deductible. Surveys have shown that the average pet owner will spend $1,200 before they have to make that difficult decision while the average pet owner with pet insurance is able to spend between $3,000 and $3,500 since they will be reimbursed. That's an extra $1,800 to $2,300 to keep your best friend around a little longer.
It's obviously out of the question to put a child with a serious illness down for financial reasons.
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