To think pet insurance is pointless!

It was 3. Breed specific. Our pug had an eye issue; if we had insurance it wouldn’t have covered it.

@Writersblock2 that'd be a pre-existing condition if there was already a problem prior to taking out the policy. It's like crashing your car today and taking out car insurance next week and trying to claim on it.

Insurance companies cover congenital problems (eg heart problems in cavaliers, hip problems in German shepherds etc) but only if there are no clinical symptoms when the policy is sold.

@Writersblock2 - we are with PetPlan, and I would recommend them most highly. I don’t know what their view on breed specific issues of pugs is, though - sorry.

You need to look for a cheaper insurer.

I pay £31 per month for lifetime cover for my dog. It seemed like a silly amount of money until she became really ill. After more than £3700 worth of scans, tests and trial medications she was diagnosed with hypothyroidism. She's on two types of medication for life. They cost £81 per month. All I've ever had to pay is £29 per month. Bargain!

We used Petplan for our dog but what started off as reasonable premiums went up dramatically once he was on regular medication. It got ridiculously expensive. We'd have been better off paying for the medication ourselves. He did get very poorly before he died but there was nothing that could be done for him anyway so the insurance made no difference. We had cats that were insured for their lifetimes (16 and 17 years) with a different, cheaper, insurance company and they wriggled out of paying for every single thing we tried to claim for. Money down the drain. We haven't got insurance for the cats we have now but we are in a position to be able to afford to pay for treatment should they need it. If we weren't then I would probably still get insurance but choose the company very carefully.

Thanks, I’ll look into petplan. What I meant by my pug comment was that if we HAD insurance, all the insurances we’d looked at previously wouldn’t have covered it because it was considered breed specific. Luckily it was only a minor issue.

I've never known an insurance company refuse breed specific conditions unless they were evident prior to taking out a policy (and my job is processing insurance claims in a veterinary hospital)

My cats aren't insured, but at 17 and both now with chronic lifelong conditions, the meds alone are costing £130/month, plus I have to feed them prescription diet which is about twice the price of regular food - and they need consultations and blood tests 2-3 times per year.
I still don't know if insurance would have been a better bet taking into account the 15 years of premiums paid in when they were young and healthy.

Have found this thread really interesting. It seems pet insurance is a gamble. Plenty of evidence for & against. I didn’t insure my last dog - we put £50 a month away for 12 years and our only vet bill was for an overnight stay & intra antibiotics for a tummy bug - £150. I’ve now got 2 6 month olds, I’ve not insured them as I find the different levels of cover bewildering. Will now do a lot more research into the different cover options and re-consider. Thanks OP & everyone else for posting!

Didn't get insurance for my cat and within 6 months he'd developed polyps in his throat... he literally had a price on his head as we only had 1000 to spend on getting him fixed, otherwise it would have been the great cattery in the sky...

Luckily found a vet who would work with our budget, and we have since got him insured.

Sooo...if you aren't prepared to have your animal put down get insurance!

We fully expected that our dog’s insurance premium would rocket after the year of the £10,000 claim, but it didn’t. It went up, but broadly in line with what we were expecting, and even the excess didn’t go up - well - excessively.

My dog is 5 and was diagnosed a year ago with epilepsy. He’s cost well over £3k so far. His drugs cost £150 a month when he’s well, and will do so for life. If he needs further treatment or hospitalisation (which we have twice in the year) we’re looking at £1000+ each time.
I pay £20 a month to insure him and it barely went up last year. Shop around online and see what you can get with the same cover. I halved my premiums the year before he was diagnosed.

@FrozenSprats have a look into it and speak to the staff in your vets. They won't be able to tell you which company to go for (for legal reasons) but will be able to help you understand the terms and what it all means. 2 animals the same age means they're going to get old at the same time and be twice the financial risk!

within a year of getting him as a kitten one of our cats racked up over 5k of vet bills. Both cats are now nearly ten and i still think we haven't paid out as much as we received. Insurance was totally worth it for us!

YANBU, I looked in to pet insurance but found it to be a complete rip off. The ones I saw, the things it covered were so restricted. It had conditions like once the pet is treated for something like ligament repair on a knee, that is now a pre-existing condition and won't cover the other side. Once you factor in excess and rising premiums, definitely not worth it.

Also I don't believe in things like cancer treatment or serious orthopaedic surgery after an accident for cats. I think it's cruel.

im inclined to agree. i have a GSD with a problem but they only pay out once a year for his meds -
i kept it in case he needed further operations but its unlikely now he is 5. i pay £26 a month and they must pay me out £60 a year if that for his meds.

i think i may not renew,

I think a lot of it depends on whether your pet is over or under the risk profile.

My cars are indoor and they have a good diet of premium catfood they're not overweight. I feel I would be paying over the odds for insurance as I would be subsidising all the outdoor cats that are at risk of getting run over, having fights, picking up diseases, eating stuff they shouldn't etc that my cats aren't at risk of.

Obviously my cats may be unlucky and get cancer or diabetes,if so I do have the funds from 5 years of no insurance for them, but I do recognise that the cost for care bay exceed that.

“Also I don't believe in things like cancer treatment or serious orthopaedic surgery after an accident for cats. I think it's cruel.”

That depends on the treatment...

I had a cat on chemo for 5 years, it was a steroid tablet every second day and another tablet every 2 weeks. No real side effects...

But to get her lymphoma diagnosed in the first place was the expensive part and whether I’d chosen to treat it or not, I’d not have wanted to have had her put down before I actually knew what was wrong with her.

Milkittillturnitintocheese which insurer are you with? We use Morethan. Our epileptic dogs insurance started at £20per month, I got the best one that they did, thinking that he'd be covered for everything & if he got a long term illness he'd be covered. Next year, after epilepsy diagnosis, it went up to £44prmnth, year after £99permnth!
I shopped around a lot but most insurers wouldn't even insure him, with his pre existing condition.

YABU. A cruciate ligament repair could cost thousands.
A good insurance policy is absolutely worth it. Putting money aside could work if your per only got ill when it was 10 years old but what do you do in the case if your pet gets ill or injured in the first year and you don’t have the money?

Thursdaydreaming should I have had my cat PTS when he fractured his jaw rather than having it fixed? He's fine now providing he doesn't overdo the dried food but he had several operations to fix it and had a wire for months.

You can't just say cancer treatment or serious orthopaedic surgery is cruel, it depends on the circumstances and the temperament of the cat.

We would have happily kept the Insurance for our cats but can't get them to the vets for their up to date jabs. We did spend £800 nearly three years ago trying to save one cat but he died anyway.
After he dies we started putting £60 a month into a separate 'cat' bank account which we don't touch (yet) we have £1700 in there now.

I don't think it's a waste of time because vets can be very, very expensive!

Pet insurance is no more of a gamble than house insurance - how many people have paid decades of buildings insurance without a major claim? How many times do you hear of someone being flooded or losing everything in a fire and they haven't been insured?
And a breeds like pugs or Frenchies are always going to be expensive to insure because the chances of a massive vet bill are very high.

and what if your dog runs into the road and causes a pile up?
can you pay for the car repairs and expenses of the driver and passenger(s)?

Only on mumsnet 🤣🙈 wtf?