Insurance or PDSA?

[MissScarlett]

I just wanted to ask what MN-ers think of this plan - because I'm at home with the kids and my partners wages aren't great, we get help from the council with our rent which would allow us to use the PDSA.

We felt a bit weird about deliberately choosing to have a puppy and then not paying for it - (not judging others who do btw, that's essentially what it's for, I guess)...so before we got her, we had a serious look at our finances, found a good cheap-ish lifetime insurance policy (with Tesco - costs about £15 per month) and saved up some money in a special account for her vaccinations and other possible unforeseen type stuff.

Anyway, I was speaking to a friend and she suggested registering with the PDSA instead of a private vet and getting our treatment (including vaccinations) with them for free, and setting up a £15 a month Direct Debit ongoing donation thing (with PDSA) instead of paying the £15 to Tesco. What do you think?

Well, your circumstances may chance and you may not always be eligible for the PDSA - if that happens you may not then be able to get her insured if she is either too old by then, or if she has had any treatments for specific things as any insurer will need to have those declared then will exclude related issues.

It is also possible that something may affect her that the PDSA do not have the funding/equipment/expertise to deal with in the same way private practice would do. If that were to happen would you be upset that she could be getting better care if the money factor was not stopping you at that point. Please don't get me wrong, the PDSA does a very good job and the best it can for the patients that are seen, but they are an overworked, funded charity that has to draw the line somewhere about what/how they deal with certain clinical situations that are not always the best choices for a particular problem.

Well, just a couple of points to consider for you - personally I would go with the insurance and know you can continue this and always have the choice for referral and everything to be done in a particular situation - vaccines would be additional cost yes, but you considered all this and had factored in budgeting for these at the start so it shouldn't be a factor in your choice I guess.

Hope that helps

read chance as change above doh!

Thanks - it does. It's very likely that she will need to be insured at some point fairly soon as I'm going to hopefully return to work within about the next six months and this will end our eligibilty for the PDSA.

I suppose I liked the idea of my money going to the PDSA instead of Tesco, but I guess it depends on whether I want to take a chance - I'm sure she'll probably be fine but if she turns out to have some chronic type condition, I'm not going to be able to get her insured, am I?

And the points about quality of care...definitely an important point.

Thanks beautifulgirls - hadn't considered either of these things.

can you call the PDSA out after hours, if your dog is run over or develops a gastric torsion or some other emergency?