£500 per year on insurance!

[AshGirl]

We have 2 ragdoll house cats and are trying to decide whether we are better off cancelling their insurance and relying on savings to meet any costs.

They are about 5.5 years old (don't know exactly as they are rescues) and only one of them has ever had a medical issue. This was minor and remedied quickly.

Has anyone else decided to ditch the insurance or is it just a cost we should suck up as the price of having our lovely girls?

My two 6 year old Persia s ran up bills of £16000 in two years. With various ailments. We've had pancreatitis, jaw surgery and cardiomyopathy in both girls. Don't do it unless you can lay your haves on a lot of money very quickly!

Ps. Mine are also house cats.

Shop around. I pay £360 for the year for 3 Ragdoll’s and that includes breeding risk cover (emergency c-section etc.) it sounds like you’re being overcharged.

£16k?!? £500 a year seems like a bargain!

@TastingTheRainbow Thanks for the tip! We will shop around

Mine are old, but I'm now spending around £150 a month on daily medication for the two of them. They're not insured (never have been). I wish they were!

Never bothered with insurance for mine, it didn't really exist about 35 years ago when I first acquired a cat. None of my cats to date would have benefitted from insurance over their lifetimes so so far I'm massively quids in.
My latest two were diagnosed with heart murmurs so the Battersea vet spoke to us to tell us that we wouldn't be able to get any heart insurance cover for them. He was clearly very relieved when we said that wasn't a problem for us. (and the heart murmurs have now disappeared).

Yep 16k. My current premium is £52 a year. But the one with the very severe heart disease died last year. Touch wood. My new cat hasn't had a claim yet! I worked out it will cost me 19 years of premiums to be out of pocket!

So £250 per cat? If you think that's a lot, would you easily find £2,000 or £5,000 if they needed an operation or emergency care? If either or both got a chronic condition such as diabetes or even a skin condition, your annual vet bills would also be way more than £250 per cat.

Like most insurance, obviously you will wish you never need to use it but if you need it, you'll be glad you have it! Bills can easily go up if they need emergency admission/overnight hospitalisation, scans, blood tests, operations...

If you shop around make sure you choose a lifetime/covered for life type policy that will cover per condition for many years if needed. Many of the cheaper ones have one year limit on cover per condition.

I think Maia's five different heart medications came to about £60 a month

I would be asking myself why these cats cost so much and why they seem to have so many ailments!!!

Have to agree insurance is the way to go,we didn't have it for our Savannah's thinking it would be a judgement call if it came to it - first one was hit by a car by the time my baby was found there wasn't a choice and vet said the kindest thing was to pts but my second was caught in an animal trap and options were continue care which amounted to in excess of £10k with no guarantee of success or amputation at close to £1k (not including everything they had already tried to save his leg ££££s) - I thought if it came down to it I could make a choice but in reality I'd would have done anything to save both of them - shop around though there are newer companies like brought by many that do offer a cash back if you don't claim in a a year x

@jomalone It just seems that way because there's no NHS for pets! According to government data a 10 minute consultation with a GP costs the NHS £50. Most vet's charge around £35 for a consultation.

An operation such as a hysterectomy costs the NHS around £5,000 or more. A cat spay, which is the equivalent op, usually costs around £85. Vet's are highly skilled and have at least one nurse working with them, and all the equipment is expensive. Add to that the other costs of running a practice and they are definitely not overcharging.

Thanks all. I think DH and I are concluding that it is worth the cost if we never have to make a decision about treatment based on £££ alone.

We will definitely look at what we can save and be grateful that the ladies are so far in good health!

£250 per cat seems cheap to me! Harry (moggie) costs nearly £400 a year which isn't much less than my car insurance! We've had a lot of claims so it's definitely worth it though.

I have PetPlan which is v expensive at £59 pcm. However if my cat develops a condition which he has (he's 11) he's covered for life. My friend had a cat covered by one of the supermarkets. Cat developed a couple if conditions and it was £100pcm plus regular checkups.

For my accident prone cat in 11 years we gave done:

End of tail amputated: 950
Stomach pump and scans abd hospitalisation after acute poisoning £2250
Stomach pump after eating lilies £1150

No has osteoarthritis so on metacam at £56 x 6 per year, 6 monthly checks and bloods. About an extra £500 (i have to pay the first 20% as he's an old boy).

For him, yes it's been worth it.

May I just respond to the comment about the NHS and there being no NHS for cats. The NHS is funded from taxation - it is not free - everyone contributes and it is free only at the point of delivery. We have been registered with two vets. Each one has provided excellent service, always kind and polite as have been all the veterinary nurses. The same cannot be said for my NHS GP who couldn't also perform a variety of ops. I think my vet provides exceptional vfm.

My BUPA premium is £129pcm - subsidised by my employer. I don't think my local private hospital is as good as my vet.

OhTheRoses my Dad always said he'd rather see a vet that a doctor as vets have to be able to work out what's wrong without the patient being able to explain!

Troy was a moggy who at the age of 5 had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. From the January to May when he died vets bills were nearly £4,000.

@OhTheRoses That's my point, it really annoys me when people say vet's are overpriced and cats shouldn't be expensive pets worth insuring etc. People just don't realise how much healthcare costs because they are not having to hand over money for their own healthcare at the point of use in the UK.

Tesco are very reasonable.

Yes, but as my friend found the savings cost her a lot more when her cat developed a lomg term chronic conditipn necause they only covered it for one year and he lived another five and then developed related condotions which were not covered. Read the clauses carefully. On balaance it wouldn't have cost me more to privately fund but one buys peace of mind. If I were to get two cats I'd be minded not to insure next time and put the money aside but only because I have the money to fund in any event.

We used to have Petplan insurance when our (now deceased) cats were younger. They were very active/prone to getting into scraps with neighbouring cats and we had a baby in the house.

The premiums shot up after about the age of 5 and we concluded that we would rather self-insure. We probably ran up £2,000 worth of vets bills over the subsequent decade.

I might think differently if we lived near a busy road and the neighbours had big dogs/boisterous kids.

We have four cats and had another cat who had to be pts. Max had £16,000 vet bill in 18 mth. Sassy has has £250, daisy nothing, Lottie nothing Willard nothing. I thought about stopping insurance but thank god we didn't as it was just as max got his cancer! Definitely worth keeping as you don't know when or how much anything is going to cost you!