Veterinarian Discusses Pet Insurance Pros and Cons|Trupanion, Nationwide, Lemonade

Hi everyone, welcome to today's video Get you centered there Um, we're gonna be talking today about pet insurance I get asked a lot about pet insurance and I think it's a good topic to touch on not recommending any specific brand I'm, just going to give you the information as I You know know it being in the industry And so it pet insurance is really big in other countries. Not the united states. It's not really taken off here Quite the same as it has in other countries And so honestly my experience with it is a little bit limited, but i'm going to share with you what I know pet insurance is obviously For a lot of people a good idea. Um, the people that I do that and see that have it seem to really enjoy it It does seem to lift a lot of the burden as far as you know Being able to afford certain diagnostics or certain treatments that maybe you want to do Um that otherwise you would not be able to do and so I think people do enjoy it for that reason Um, but it is important to understand that it is not quite the same as people insurance And so I do want to go over a couple of those things with you today So that you kind of understand what you're getting into so in human, you know insurance, um, you know You go to the doctor and your insurance gets billed. They pay it. You don't necessarily pay it out of pocket some You know, there are some where you get reimbursed But the majority is not coming out of your pocket Um, the insurance is covering it and then you will get a bill for what the insurance doesn't cover later Pet insurance for the most part is not like that and i'm going to go over one two, three, four five Of the popular some of the most popular pet insurances here in the states And how they do this, but in general pet insurance. Um It is a you pay everything and then they reimburse you later situation Now just like any insurance company and again, you're going to have to call them and get the particulars There are a million different plans. Okay, so you've got simple wellness plans You've got catastrophic plans. You have plans that exclude this and plans that exclude that different price points different price points for different breeds Um different price points for different ages. Do you have a pre-existing condition? All that stuff is still the same like, you know, like in human medicine And so it may not make sense for you to get a plan That is a wellness including plan if you live in an area of the country where wellness is not very expensive so for example where I practice our wellness exams and Everything you can get for under 200 Well under 200 you can get your whole yearly stuff, right? So your exam with a doctor all the vaccines that you need all the parasite screening that you need um, you know everything for less than 200 bucks that doesn't make sense if your Premium that you're having to pay for your pet insurance is a hundred dollars a month Um, because you're well, you know If you have a young pet and you're just needing wellness and you know a few things here there throughout the year Just doesn't make any sense But I know that there are areas of the country where wellness exams are, you know To get everything your pet needs to get them through the year now My 200 is not including preventatives, but i'm just saying your basic exam and all the You know routine testing and vaccines. Um, you know if that's going to cost you, you know several hundreds four five six seven hundred dollars I've heard people say um You know that may make sense, especially if they include coverage of your preventatives, which is in my Particular practice the preventatives are you know, the most expensive? part of the yearly maintenance um, and so if it's something where you have to pay that out of pocket it may you know make more sense for you to um Make a little savings account or something and put money in there versus investing on an insurance plan where you're paying a monthly premium And you're never going to use it Now where I do think that it can be useful is um with the catastrophic You know events that you're not expecting and so um, you know if they're able to let's say your dog got a bit gets hit by a car and has a fractured pelvis and Needs a total hip replacement or something like that. It's going to cost you ten thousand dollars Well, yeah having pet insurance is going to be really helpful. The caveat is it is a reimbursement And so you have to have that ten thousand dollars and then they reimburse you later Um, and so that is a really important thing, you know, really important thing to know with the big big big expense Insurance options which is where I feel like they're most useful at least in my area Um, but you do still have to have that money now on the screen here I'm going to flash up some of the major players in the pet insurance in the united states. I don't endorse any of them I'm not paid. This is not sponsored um, certainly if any of these companies want to share more information and Send a representative to do a little interview, that would be great Um, but we've got true pannion healthy paws embrace nationwide, which a lot of people know nationwide They have those really funny commercials and then lemonade The only one of these that has a somewhat direct to pay to the veterinarian is true pannion and that's not required it is a It is a program that they offer to veterinarians that they can Subscribe to and which is very nice for the clients The problem is the problem is because I looked into this for my particular practices. There is some um medical record and confidentiality Concerns when you let an insurance company basically have access to your medical records um, and so or you know, or In order to be able to for them to pay for your clients services you have to Have your medical records like ready to them immediately and um, you know hassling with You know the veterinarian through the insurance company in order to do that and to allow the client to walk out Without having to pay anything. Um at least when I looked into it several years ago was Not a good thing um, so there are Some veterinary offices that will do that, but that's an opt-in. They don't have to participate in that Otherwise it's all a reimbursement situation Um, as you can see with trupanian, they do not have any lifetime caps Um, they do have like the deductible but it is per condition deductible So depending on you know, what condition there is or or what? You sign up for they're going to be different. Um, can they do wellness? No trupanian does not do wellness um, and so, you know, that's an option they do At least when I put this through the ai search they did In comparison to all of them have higher premiums healthy paws again is the reimbursement They don't have any lifetime caps So, you know if your pet is a very needy one of these very needy guys They're not going to cap you out. You do have to pay an annual deductible Um, they again do not do those wellness visits, you know, and and I can see why you know how I just explained it Um, they do they do offer fast claims. Um, the coverages are really simple Um, but they have been increasing their premiums and so Um, you know that may be something that you notice with healthy paws now again The premiums are going to be different. They're going to be different for everybody You have to go in their website. You have to get a quote because just like people it's all going to be different embrace Um reimbursement again, they do have annual caps So if you hit that annual cap, you have that ten thousand dollar total hip replacement You know your dog gets an ear infection. They may not cover it Uh annual deductible that declines over time options So again, lots of options you can pick and you can add wellness visits onto that very customizable um Claims documentation scrutiny. So yeah, I have had some issues with that not with this particular company I can't remember if this particular company but just like with any insurance company They a lot of them don't want to pay for things. And so I have had Clients report to me that they're having issues Um again with insurance companies not wanting to cover something because we didn't write a certain way in our medical notes Exactly the way that they wanted it and they were scrutinizing Um, you know what the diagnosis was and things like that nationwide is a real, you know, big popular human um pet insurance I did hear somewhere recently that they were I mean that might have been state farm. One of the big ones was dropping Pet insurance, so i'm not sure if this one's still around Or not, but they do also have annual caps that can vary by plan you do have that annual deductible you can add on The wellness coverage on this one and they do cover exotic pets, which is nice because exotic pets tend to be very expensive um People did complain on this one. There's some internet chatter about the payout structure Not being exactly what people wanted and so definitely do your research on that Lemonade pet and I think this is one That a lot of people do enjoy again. It is a reimbursement with the annual caps They have the annual deductible you can do wellness And the thing that people enjoy about this Is that you have an app and the app lets you upload things on there So if you do get kind of fast payouts, even though it is a reimbursement You can get some fast payouts on it And I know people come in with their little app and have showed me that before and they do seem to enjoy this lemonade pet Um coverage limitations vary by state so you're gonna have to again have an individual Assessment of your pet and if it makes sense for your pet your breed your area of the country, but in general Yeah, it is nice to have peace of mind as a pet parent that you know You can get the treatment you want and that finances aren't the limiting factor and as a veterinarian Yes, it is nice to not have to go in um, like for instance the other day I had someone had a pet that had A really bad cough and you know I said, you know It would be really nice before we got into antibiotics and stuff to do a pcr to know if we're even dealing with bacterial infection and it was so Nice to hear someone say you know what? Yeah, I want to know go ahead. I have pet insurance That was really nice because it let me do the proper channels of the diagnostic plan rather than just saying boom Let's put you on antibiotics, um because it cut it came back that the pet didn't have a bacterial infection after all And so I would have had that pet on antibiotics for no reason And so I think there is a place for it But definitely do your research and definitely know the limitations and keep those things in mind. Does it make sense? Does my premium make sense? Especially in what you know, are you going to include wellness or not? Does it make sense in my area and understanding that it is a reimbursement thing? so even though you have pet insurance, you may still have to have like a little slush fund of readily available cash In case, you know, you need to bridge the gap between when your reimbursement comes and um, you know when You know the money needs to go out. Of course, you know, there's always other options like care credit scratch pay Credit cards, etc But you know, it's another option to look into like I said, it's not that big in the in the u.s um, and I think that there's You know, that can be a good thing, you know when you don't have insurance meddling in your health care but it can be a bad thing too because we want to be able to Expand our access to care to people as veterinary medicine Evolves and we can do more things and we can offer better services like this PCR that i'm talking about that We didn't have before. Yes the cost of care not the cost of care the cost of the Options that we have available to us the bigger the better options that we have available are more costly And so if that is something that you feel like you would be interested in Pet insurance may be something that you'd like to look into. So that's my take on pet insurance I hope that it was useful to you and i'll catch you guys next time. Bye