insurance for older cats - to continue or not?

[ArchieHarrison]

I've got a pair of elderly cats (17) whose insurance is up at the end of June. Premiums for the pair will be £800 for the year for what is ultimately pretty limited cover (it's £99 excess, 15% co payment and £2k vet fees limit).
One cat is far more expensive than the other because of a tiny claim of around £200 for treatment for a cut a couple of years ago - hardly indicative of ongoing health issues and I've ended up paying the claim amount in increased premium.
I've spent thousands in insurance over the years, for claims totalling less than £500 - I would have been far better off putting the premium aside and paying. I slightly suspect that vets have a different rate card for insured animals than privately paid in any case.

Do you continue to insure elderly / healthy animals? Should I get them checked up before policy expiry and make a decision based on that? ie if they're still fit as old fiddles with no kidney etc issues, cancel the insurance? (& hope that they continue to stay well away from cars)

I would. I considered cancelling my cat's insurance but I'm so glad I didn't. We hadn't claimed up until he was 11 and then it was claim after claim - broken jaw, osteomylitis x 2, kidney disease and possible heart disease. Thankfully the insurance paid for all of it. Even with the excess it still saved a lot of money.

Sod’s law is of course diabetes or kidney disease 2 months after insurance is stopped! But cancelling would still mean I’d have to have a claim in excess of £1k to be worse off

That should obviously have said I wouldn't!

When Harry broke his jaw the first bill was £1900 and he had a lot more vet visits after that.

I buy his kidney meds from Fetch as we don't have a claim for his kidneys at the moment, however when we did it was cheaper to get it from the vet.

Mine have run up bills of 16k. But at 17 you will probably be limited to the amount of treatment you would actually want to give anyway. So I'm not sure I would continue if they had no underlying problems.