Is Your Pet Covered?
Monday, June 30th, 2008Although the number of pet owners in the States is on the rise, most of those owners will not obtain insurance for their pet even though they will argue that the pet is part of the family. This is strange when you consider just about everything else we own is insured from out homes to cars and especially insurance for our own health.
Pet insurance is an industry that has been overlooked and thought to be silly by some people, but if you’ve had to take your pet to the veterinarian lately, you will now realize that those trips can be very expensive! Just as with private medical insurance, vets costs have risen sharply in the last ten years and a recent trip to the vets to treat my dog after an auto accident proved this with almost twelve hundred dollars to pay.
If rising costs of pet insurance are not enough to convince you, there are others to consider. The realistic fact is that the more pets you own, the greater the risk that one of them will be involved in an accident or become sick and trust me when I say that this invariably happens at the worst time, financially.
The last thing you want to think about is money when you need your pet to have urgent treatment. I had doubts about treating our dog when he had his accident as the thought of paying out over 1,000 dollars is a decision I hope I do not have to make again. The problem is you really don’t know if your pet is going to pull through after the operation and treatment but in this instance everything turned out ok.
On this occasion we were lucky but the large vet bill placed us in an awkward position as we were having a few financial problems of our own. Our money worries had started about a month prior to this accident when I had been laid off after ten years with the company so we were financially extended and if it wasn’t for my brother coming to the rescue, I don’t know how we would have managed the bill.
If you love your pets then they deserve the best medical treatment, something that is assured if you have a decent pet insurance policy and you will not have to think about how little treatment you can get away with. The stupid thing is pet insurance although rising is not going to break the bank and can be purchased for as little as twenty dollars or so per month although better policies will cost about double that.
If you have a number of pets, then some insurance providers will give a discount if you decide to place them all on one policy to lower the monthly costs. If you are a pet owner then with a bit of luck this information will have convinced you of the importance of getting your pet insured.