I'm wondering what you think about this... because while the pet insurance model of reimbursement certainly makes sense for vets and ensures we get paid, it strikes me as unfair and almost cruel to the owners. Basically, if you have pet insurance, you still have to be able to either pay a huge bill upfront or have good enough credit to pay for it with a credit card - and lose money paying interest on the credit card bill while the paperwork goes through. In theory, even paying up front is an interest-free loan to the insurance company that costs the client money - that few grand could have been gathering interest in the bank.

No other insurance system works like this. Auto insurance sends you a check. Human health insurance, as much as it has caused me to tear out my hair, eventually pays directly to the service provider, without me ever coughing up the cash.

I feel like every solution the vet field comes up with to help people pay - insurance, CareCredit, whatever - helps the relatively well-off who could probably pull it together if push came to shove anyway. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind making life easier for these people, I plan to be one of them. But the people that need the help most, who live paycheck to paycheck, who have bad credit, and completely love their dogs and kitties, they get left out in the cold. There's funds and resources to help them - my vet school has such a fund - but there's not nearly enough of such money floating around.

YIKES! I shutter at the thought of pet insurance becoming the norm for petcare. Right now it's easy going to the vet. You take your pet to whatever vet you want, get your pet treated, you pay - and that's that. If pet insurance becomes like human hmo's, well gee, you want to go to what vet? Sorry, that vet's not on our list. You want what prescription, sorry we won't cover that. Your vet wants to do what procedure? Well, we don't agree that's necessary - and we will wait you out til your pet's probably on death row before we'll fancy the idea of reimbursing you, and maybe only 20 percent, if that - since the vet's not on our preferred list. Another thought, if the vet you want is tops in his/her field, they probably won't accept insurance. Heck, because of HMO's, it's even hard to pay cash for human medical treatment, since doctors have had to jack up their prices to make up for the pittance HMOs pay them. And then having to deal with the series of bills, insurance statements that never seem match up - only thing that's decipherable is "YOU PAY THIS AMOUNT NOW". Pet insurance, NO THANKS. It's the one place where things are still simple. It's expensive to want to be alive these days - for both humans and our pets. Just a fact of life.

Pet insurance makes sense for people who are in between the extremes of being so low income as to not have available credit to pay up front and take a small hit on interest on the one hand and those who have 10K in savings on the other. And I think most Americans fall in to that "somewhere in the middle" category.

It has made sense for us. I can afford the $60 a month that insurance on my two dogs costs. And I have a high limit credit card. What I don't have is quadruple digit savings. If it wasn't for a generous gift from my parents, we'd still be paying off the $1700 bill from when one of my dogs ate a bottle of ibuprofen last year, before we got our act together and got insurance.

And ultimately, having a veterinary emergency is stress enough. I hated having the added "But how am I going to pay off my credit card bill after this is over?!?" stress on top of it.

While it may seem like a bum deal to have to prepay and then get reimbursed by the pet insurance agent I think for now it's necessary. Veterinarians can't really afford not to get paid for several month to a year like hospital can. There is not any infrastructure for it. Given the rise of medical opportunities for pets combined with their increased family status (I.E. Suma is part of my family) I think insurance makes sense. I hope that that the premiums don't equal the money I would pay a vet, because that means my dog is healthy. But if you're having trouble justifying the cost, just think of the $250 bill for euthanasia, which many people have had to pay in alternative for a costly treatment. Many <a href="http://www.petfirsthealthcare.com"> pet insurance</a> companies like PetFirst Healthcare offer additional benefits too like Advertising and Reward coverage if your pet is lost, and Boarding Kennel coverage if you yourself is hospitalized. Great Post by the way!