Recently one of my sister's cats has had some serious health problems and the cost of care was substantial. It's got me thinking about health insurance for my cat. What would be the best companies to look at?

I just checked with my kid. He is a Vet Tech at a full service emergency Vet Clinic in NOLA. This is a very busy practice and care can get expensive real quick.
He tells me that he rarely sees anyone with pet insurance.
He says (cautiously) that VPI is the best but you get what you pay for. He says another option is called CareCredit. Which is essentially a credit card accepted by many Vets for care. They often have 6 months interest free for charges.
Hope this helps.

I think VPI (now Nationwide Pet Insurance) has been the choice of one for quite a while, as imperfect as it can be. Basically, pet health insurance is a losing house bet. Only one company has managed to keep afloat, and as I recall one way they did it was to employ a lot of exclusions. Pre-existing condition exclusion can be the big deal-breaker here, as may apply to your sister's cat. Check into that before purchase.

Thanks for the replies. I've been looking at Healthy Paws, VPI and Trupanion so far.

Back when we got our Australian Shepherd "Millie", my wife investigated and obtained dog health insurance with “Healthy Paws”. I have had a number of dogs over the years but never had dog health insurance before and rolled my eyes. It’s not very much per year, but I guess we had been lucky with dogs in the past.

However, at the end of last year Millie tore her ACL and damaged the meniscus in one leg. The vets waited to see if the tendon would heal and it did not. So the only option was surgery on the leg.

The estimate for the surgery was around $3,200.00. (I was in cardiac arrest).

The woofer had the surgery after Christmas and has done quite well since. We have decided, however, (much to Millie's displeasure) that no more frisbee practice/competitions... She enjoys tennis balls and orange play balls almost as much so she'll be happy.
(We did the elimination of frisbee training after hearing another herding dog owner in the area had to have a second surgery on one competitive dog's OTHER leg. So two surgeries)... Gads.



But I am pleasantly surprised once the insurance claim was submitted. Healthy Paws covered $2600+ of the cost. (There is a deductible).
It ended up where we spent around $500.00 out of pocket.

I have no problem admitting my wife was right on this one…

This is what they did for her leg-

Thanks Rinehart for the Healthy Paws perspective. I think I'm going to go with them. They get good reviews and have decent rates.

I got insurance on my Golden Retriever because the one I had before him got cancer at an early age. It wasn't really treatable but if it had been, it would have cost a chunk of change.

I use Petplan ( link). Haven't had to make a claim yet, so I can't comment on that aspect, but the coverage is excellent. The only thing with pet insurance is that it gets very expensive as the pet ages. My golden retriever was a little under $300/yr as a puppy. At 5, his premium is now $746/yr and I imagine it will continue to increase. It provides $22,000 of annual coverage and covers 90% of vet costs with a $200 deductible.

Depending on your risk tolerance, might be a better idea to create your own "health savings account" for your pet. Just set aside money each month or year for vet expenses.

My younger golden retriever is self-insured.

I've heard horror stories from people with pet insurance. The companies find some reason NOT to cover just about everything they have tried to put through. (I seriously considered it, 2/3 of our cats have serious health issues... I'd say we have forked out somewhere in the 20k dollar range on vet bills in the last 24 months.. insurance would have been nice to say the least)

Insurance would be nice, my dogs monthly pills cost me about $450 a month, but I love him so much, it's worth it to me.

Take all of this from a guy who's a vet and does it for a living:

Pet insurance can be a huge blessing when your pet has a traumatic or non-recurrent issue that is covered by insurance. It has surely saved lives.

However, pet insurance, much like their human counterparts, have determined exactly what to NOT cover in order to be profitable (turns out they aren't communist after all...) and so you need to be very careful. If your labrador has elbow or hip dysplasia, for example, many will call that a breed predisposition and won't cover it. If the point of getting insurance is to cover your risks, and the company says they won't cover the most common issues with certain breeds because... well, because those are known, common issues, then why are you buying it?

Lastly, since many companies have "add on" options to up your coverage, by the time that you pay them for the good coverage, you could have just pocketed that amount over time and saved money.

Great points thanks. I've been reading all the "fine print" on these policies. It's interesting to say the least. My cats only 2 years old so it's only $25.63/months with a $100 deductible with 90% coverage for included conditions. Not sure how much the cost climbs as she ages though.

One additional thought: been a while since I've looked into it, but some of the policies at one time would reimburse you for the cost of your pets' vaccines, heartworm prevention, and some dental prophylactic procedures. By the time one took advantage of all the "included" services, it tended to make the pet insurance worth the expenditure. I think probably they correctly assume most won't do everything they can, so they'll save some cost on those clients. Might be worth checking into.....

Most of the policies I've checked out don't conver any preventive medicine, exams, etc.

I want to take a moment and thank the people like slabsides45 who choose to be Veterinarians and their staff as well.

In most (if not all) cases these docs don't make the money nor get the glory that many MDs enjoy.

A lot of them do house calls and get vegetables for payment. I have seen vets get up at 1am to go down to a farmer's barn because of a sick horse or cow. It can be dirty, sometimes dangerous work with large, heavy creatures.

And you pretty much have to love animals to do it...

Just wanted to add my experience, I have had two different pet insurance policies on our first dog, including VPI and whichever company I got as a discount as a perk at my job. Unfortunately, they never paid for themselves despite a expensive elbow surgery and some other gastro-intestinal issues. My experience with both companies was awful, they were never willing to pay for anything, always pointing to something in the ambiguous policy as a reason not to pay.

We self insure for our pets and gadgets in this house, works out much better for us.