I couldn’t help but notice a tip in Yazmin’s post yesterday on ways to save money on pets urged readers to consider health insurance for dogs and cats. Call me old fashioned, but isn’t paying for pet health insurance a waste of money?
In my days, our family dogs and cats got spayed or neutered and that was about it. If an animal got worms, we took them in, but scratches healed themselves and truly sick animals were nursed with soft food and extra petting. Hamster tumors went unchecked, cat leukemia ran its course, and our faithful golden retriever Misty enjoyed a whole chicken on her last day.
After a (small) animal died, my mom gathered us around a dirt hole where we took turns saying something nice about the pet. “Patches really liked to hide in shoeboxes.” “Popcorn laid a lot of eggs.” “Misty wanted to play all day at Point Isabel.”
I don’t remember my parents ever paying for an animal to have surgery or take life-extending medication. It’s not that we didn’t love our pets, but buying them health insurance wasn’t on the radar. Even now, I wouldn’t consider buying health insurance for my four legged friend Darwin, above.
Do you think health insurance for pets is a waste of money?
Welcome to Bargain Babe! I’m Mara, and I’m so glad you’re here. I am an obsessive bargain hunter and penny pincher, and I am determined to live a full life without EVER paying full price. 
i was recently approved for insurance for my four-legged pooch. at first i thought it was a waste of money too, until i spoke to a few friends who recommended that i get pet insurance.
it’s all about protection, the what if’s are a scary thought. What if he ran into the street playing, what if he ate something on accident, what if he ran too fast down the stairs and broke a leg .. what if ..
i got a great insurance plan, w/ $500 deduc. for a mere $23/mo. i think i can spare $23/mo for my guy.
@scaredekat That sounds like a fair deal. So with your $500 deductible and $23 a month payment, if something major happened you would end up paying $776 in one year. That ends up being $65 a month. Still a good deal in your mind?
I think it’s a waste of money.
I have a dog and two cats. All have been fixed. We take them to the vet if something seems really wrong, but that’s about it. I will not be paying for expensive life extending surgery. I love my pets, but they are not, in my opinion, family. I will treat them well, and walk them and love them, but I will not pay for insurance for them.
Thats so sad , people don’t feel there pets are family. Don’t bother having a pet. They treat you better than alot of people and only ask that you love feed and care for them when things bad. They give unconditional love and there not family ? Shame on you for saying that! Thats just being selfish. I am sure you can blow $20- easily at walmart but not for a pet.
@Pattic How true! We spend a lot of money on ourselves and not much on our pets (if you only buy food). Some people make their own pet food, reducing the cost even further.
I have three pets and have looked into insurance for them, but between the deductible, the fact that these insurance plans pay on a fee schedule that may not equal your veterinarian’s service prices, the exclusions and limitations in the plans, and the monthly out of pocket charge, pet insurance simply doesn’t add up.
I do consider our pets members of our family and would never forgo treatment on one of them if it could restore their health simply because I couldn’t afford it. But I do not believe that paying $275 in pet insurance per year with a $500 deductible per pet plus a fee allowance is the answer. You are much better off just bookmarking the money you would have paid for the insurance and tucking it away to pay for unforeseen pet health problems and regular vet visits.
@Rebecca McMahon Tucking away the money you’d pay for pet insurance and saving it for their care sounds like a very reasonable way to deal with this expense!
I just signed up for it for one of my two cats last year. It costs me about $200 a year to cover him ($200 deduc/90% repay) and he has bad teeth and always does something expensively stupid (like pinch a nerve… which looks like he’s dying when it happens and isn’t diagnosable w/o an MRI or x-ray). Considering I spend anywhere from $500-$1000 to care for him a year, spending $400 to get 90% of that back is good money.
I also just spent $1500 in a blink of an eye on my “totally healthy” cat to find out her body was shutting down from cancer. If I’d had insurance, that experience would have only cost me about $400.
Never thought I’d be an insurance promoter. But what I’ve learned is that it’s not the expensive life-extending stuff that gets you. It’s the unexpected teeth removal. Or the pinched nerve. Or the conk on the head that knocks the little guy unconscious. This stuff isn’t cheap. And I’d rather not put a healthy animal to sleep just because I think it’s too expensive. I have insurance on me. And my car. And my home. I never thought it was worth it. Til it was. Same with pet insurance.
I completely agree with Pattic. If you aren’t willing to take proper care of them when they get injured,you shouldn’t have a “pet”. I had a dog break his jaw,cost us $2,500 to get it fixed,and we didn’t think twice.You don’t leave an animal to suffer or have them put to sleep when they can easily be saved. Now I’m not saying I would take out a loan and pay $20,000 for some extensive cancer treatment,but if there was any possible way I could realistically save one of my furry family members I would do it.
But back to the topic at hand,I think health insurance for pets is a waste of money.You should be putting that money in your savings instead.Then it’s there if you need it for your pet,or anything else that might come up.
It’s funny that you would have a picture of a dachshund and be talking about pet health insurance. We have 2 dachshunds that have both had back surgery ($$don’t ask!). Wish we had gotten pet insurance though I think back problems would be a pre-existing condition for them and wouldn’t be covered anyway. They both slipped their discs between their 4th and 5th year (the most common time for dachshunds). I love them to death,but when they go, I probably will go with another breed. One of them completely recovered (Buddy,who looks like your dog) but Maddy never fully recovered and has to be expressed 3 times a day (sqeezed to get urine to come out)
@mary I’m sorry to hear your daschunds have not been in good health. Darwin, my four legged friend, is very lively and we try to exercise him everyday. It’s hard when it is so cold out and refuses to wear his warm coat (though he will wear this wool sweater). After it snows the salt everyone puts on the ground to avoid icing irritates his paws. Anyway, I hope that keeping him at an appropriate weight and exercising regularly will keep him in good health.
I have two 5-year-old loving dogs and we’ve had insurance since they were three weeks old. They are part of our family but I am conflicted about insurance. So many things aren’t covered and as the dogs get older, the insurance gets more expensive. We are with VPI and it costs us $85 per month for both dogs. I’d love to know what insurance companies other people are using and what they are spending. I want to protect my two furry babies but I do think it is pricey.
As many Americans consider their pets their children and family members, pet health insurance is reasonable. Expensive treatments such as chemotherapy for cats and ultrasound-guided surgeries are being offered to pet owners! and people are submitting their animals to these treatments. Its incredible what people today are willing to do support the health for their beloved pets.
Vaccinations for leukemia and feline HIV are now available, and pets are living longer. They are thus susceptible to more disease of aging such as kidney failure, diabetes, and cancer. When a pet owner is confronted with the availability, desire to help their pet, and high costs of these treatments, pet insurance makes a lot of sense.
People, please remember that animals for the most part do not understand why they are being submitted to procedure that are often scary, painful, and traumatic for them.
PS Bargain Babe-once Mom paid $50 for surgery to remove a tumor on a pet mouse’s head. What was the use of submitting a tiny mouse to SURGERY? The tumor soon came back and the mouse died. She has such a big heart!
love,
your NY sis
@aicha I had no idea mom paid $50 for one of our pet mouses to get a tumor removed. Was is Black Rat – the one that surreptitiously built a nest in the piano?
PS.
We always had humane-society pets or took in strays, and our Golden Retriever we got for $75 in like 1985 or something. But many people spend hundreds of dollars on purebred animals.
love,
you NY sis
I Feel sorry for Darwin
@KC Why? He gets two square meals a day, a warm bed, daily play time and walks?
I once considered insurance for my pets after spending $2.000 on knee surgery for my German shepherd mix. I decided against it because I figured I may end up spending more on the insurance than I would if something went wrong. I have 2 dogs and 2 cats so insuring them all would be spendy! I found out that my young, medium-sized mixed breed dog has hip dysplasia and may need surgery for that some day. I will just keep extra money set aside for that type of thing. My pets are very important to me and will never do without treatment just because of cost. My way of thinking is that if you can’t afford a pet, don’t get one. It’s sad how many people get a kitten or a puppy because it’s cute and then say they don’t have the money to at least get it spayed or neutered!
You tell her, NY sis! 😉
Only $50 to remove a tumor – that must have been a long, long time ago in a land far, far away …
P.S. I do not have the pet insurance but often consider getting it, so I am interested in seeing all the responses and to possibly getting some good recommendations, too.
P.P.S Darwin is adorable, Julia!
@Lisa Thanks! I’m quite fond of him, too.
Every time a blogger posts on this subject, a lot of people complain about what beasts people are when they admit that their pets are NOT children but really are what they are: members of another species in a symbiotic relationship with humans.
I love my dogs and I loved my cats. But I think persuading people to pay thousands of dollars on keeping a dying animal alive or treating expensive chronic illnesses is a racket. So is pet health insurance. Read the contract, peeps! It doesn’t cover the things your pet is most likely to get. It’s a scam.
If you took the $85 a month one reader is paying into insurance (that’s over $1,000 a year!) and put that into savings for the lifetime of the animal, by the time it got old enough to require an expensive procedure, you’d have the money saved. And if the pet suddenly kicked off this mortal coil — died quickly an inexpensively from an acute illness or an accident — you’d still have the money in your bank account.
Most dogs live 8 to 14 years. While some people are silly enough to spend $8,000 to $14,000 on medical care for a dog a cat, often the opportunity doesn’t come up. So even if you spent a fair amount on more ordinary care, you’d end up with a nice grubstake for your next pet. Or maybe enough to send one of your kids to college.
I have a 5-year old amazing dog. We’ve had insurance since we got him at 4 months old. We didn’t know if he’d had any shots and he hadn’t been fixed. We took him to the vet and signed up for insurance. The shots and neutering would have cost us about $600. We only had to pay $40 for the first 2 months up front. So worth it.
When he was 2 he got vasculitis. It would have cost hundreds of dollars for meds and blood work. We upgraded our plan on the spot to $30 and it was all covered.
His insurance covers meds, shots, checkups every 6 months and dental cleanings. It’s awesome. Saves us so much money.
Its comforting knowing that our baby will be taken care of if something was to happen to him!!!!!
@Karyn Sounds like pet insurance has saved you a lot of money and is relatively affordable. A lot of other readers asked for specific plan info. Can you share yours?
We just shelled out $2k in a vain attempt to save our dog’s life last week. Nowadays, the vets ask you to sign a form saying you will pay 75% before you leave and they bring out an estimate. Once the tests are done, your new “estimate” will be calculated, pending on what tests were run first, in order so that they might determine what’s wrong before taking another test. Our first run cost us $2k. The next estimate after the first tests said it would be another $2k to keep her alive for another 8 months. So, we sadly let her go. At $23/month for pet insurance, had we bought it 4 years ago when we got her, that total would be $1104 for insurance, only to receive a $500 deductible come time to pay up? That would have put our bill at $1500 and so it would have been a loss. In the long run, we were better off not having insurance. It’s always worked out that way. Our goal is to buy it later in their lives as long as it covers x-rays, tests, and surgeries. It’s all math even though it’s supposed to be heart.
I completely understand people wavering on whether or not to get pet insurance, due to all the hidden “stuff” that doesn’t get covered. I think each family needs to weigh their options against what breed of animal they have and the probability that their dog/cat may develop something requiring huge sums of money to fix. We do not have insurance, but often wish that we did! A dog with skin allergies is expensive!
That being said, it really upsets me at all of the comments stating that if their “pet” needed an expensive surgery, they wouldn’t pay for it. Why do you have animals? I suppose it’s reasonable to not pay huge amounts of money to extend a pet’s life, but what about comfort? My dog just needed a $2000 ACL repair surgery and it was horrible having to watch her limp around and cry each time she tried to put weight on it until we had it fixed. She’s 2. Do you suggest we put her down because her leg needed repair? Crazy.
i have 4 dogs, all different breeds that i have saved from the pound. i have thought about insurance, but each of my dogs is “part something” that have known genetic issues, so there is way too much that wont be covered. i take my dogs to a shot clinic in santa clarita (tags). they get a basic look over when i get thier shots each year & the vet that runs it will take care of ear infections and other non-surgical stuff. They have also refered me to really low cost spay & nuter places
Hi!
I carried pet insuance on my babies. Ferguson has a $2,000 surgery at age 3 and lived to be 15 years old.
I have always had insurance, even if it didn’t cover everything. My cats are definitely my babies and I do everything possible to extend their lives. We’ve had up to 5 cats and are down to only 2 older kitties now. Each cat had health insurance. A big help in treating their illnesses.
The insurance we have is through Banfield Pet Hospitals. We have an Optimum Wellness plan, no deductible.
http://www.banfield.net/optimum-wellness-plans
Pets are family, that may be so but pets aren’t humans. When you think about spending big bucks on your pet, think also of how much good that would do for poor kids and aren’t they more important?
I think it definitely depends on the “relationship” the pet has in the family. In my family, we have no kids, and we dote on our little Chihuahua like parents do with their kids. When she had a health scare a couple years ago, I seriously considered getting pet insurance because I knew I would have been willing to pay almost anything to help her if it was needed (within some intangible barrier of reason).
However, we have friends who have children in the family, and the dog, although loved, is a lower priority in the family. This makes sense to me and insurance for those pets is probably not worth it for them.
I have just been researching pet insurance for my newly adopted lab. I have never had pet insurance and last year my other lab had pancreatitis and 8 nights in the vets cost over $5M. My other dog got an ulcerated cornea to the tune of $2M but never for one minute did I consider not getting treatment. I would be very grateful to get recommendations as I have read some very negative comments on pet insurance review about some of the well known companies. Thanks to modern veterinary medicine both dogs healed completely.
barbain babe,
not it was a tiny, tiny mouse long before the time of black rat. this was back in the day, as one of your readers suggested.
love,
your NY sis