Advice re pet insurance please.

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: Pet Owners License.

shdonald32

Help please.

I would like to insure our cat to cover vet fees what's the best way to do this? Insurance for cat? It's a mine field 🙈

Is it cheaper to insure your pet and then if you need the vet it's covered by insurance?

HildaOgdenx

Mod - OP I have moved your thread to a more suitable forum.

Hilda

shdonald32

Welcome a new memeber

Alun

It's a tricky one, and depends completely on what illnesses and injuries your cat has during it's lifetime. But then that's the whole point of insurance I suppose.

Cats can be accident prone, and an encounter with a car, being involved in a fight with another cat or dog, or a bad fall can mean some quite expensive treatments. In our case we got insurance for our two cats, and although I never worked out if we broke even on the whole thing, for me it was the peace of mind knowing that if something serious did happen that we wouldn't be forced into making a difficult decision based on what we could afford on the spur of moment in a difficult situation.

Towards the end, one cat had chronic kidney disease which went on for 2-3 years, and we were certainly glad of the pet insurance then. If you do choose to go down that route, in my opinion Allianz is the only one worth considering.

Nody

The pre conditions was the killer for us on insurance on one cat; as we adopted a cat who was half blind, half deaf and had seizures and the point of insurance was not really there (basically everything became a pre-condition and not covered). However for our other healthy cats it's a no brainer to have it on them as insurance; if there's something serious to happen, accident as it escaped out a window etc. As I work with rescues I can also tell you the horror stories from the amount of healthy cats who're were due to be put down due to the owner simply not being able (or willing) to pay for what's required (be that broken bones from a fall, kidney problems etc.). I'd put it like this; if you're comfortable to put up 2k EUR or more (and it can easily be more) on the spot at any time for your cat's health then insurance is not required. If not; get insurance exactly for that purpose and I echo @Alun that Allianz is the one to go to. May not be the cheapest but you get what you pay for and I'd argue the most widely accepted (you can settle directly at the vet rather than pay yourself and claim back).

gipi

My experience from a number of years ago was that my cat had feline leukemia when I adopted him from a rescue - they didn't know this, so I was able to insure him.

I took out one year insurance, and ran up bills of over 2500 euro (mostly covered,thank goodness).

Because I hadn't paid the higher fee for ongoing annual insurance, his leukemia would have been treated as a pre-existing condition when I insured him again, and wouldn't have been covered.

Unfortunately, poor mog didn't make it so I didn't have to renew.

gipi

PS, there is usually an excess to be paid, so not all bills are covered, and insurance doesn't normally cover regular visits for vaccinations.

Faith

We have insurance with Allianz too and it was great when our cat was diagnosed with FIP a few years ago. It didn't cover the medication (that's a long story but has to do with the meds not being officially approved) but covered all the rest of the care, including monthly vet visits, monthy blood tests, supportive treatments etc.

That being said, it has to all fall under the one umbrella. Our dog attended the vet on three occasions for three different incidents and they were all considered separate claims. As no individual claim was more than the excess, we couldn't get any of it reimbursed. So definitely useful for moderate/severe accidents/injuries or longer-term/chronic illnesses, but no pet insurance covers routine visits generally.

twiddleypop

Has anpost just started doing pet insurance?

Allianz has gone up so shopping around but know allianz has a great reputation.

tk123

I’d be careful of changing. Pet insurance is like health insurance .. you can’t jump insurers like you can eg with a car and expect the same level of cover. Claims can be written off as existing illness so while you might see a saving in policy you may lose out when you go to claim. This happened to a friend when they changed from Allianz to another insurer.