Insurance Claims

It appears what ails the human healthcare/insurance business is spreading to the pet side of the house as well.

Some vets are carrying out costly, non-essential procedures, which could be leading to increased premiums for pet owners, a leading insurer has said.

The increasing cost of claims means insurers have had to increase premiums.

Just under a quarter of all cat and dog owners hold an insurance plan in case their pets need treatment - and that figure is growing.

Wow…I’m surprised that the number of pets covered is that high. I know my parents recently tried to get insurance for me but thought it wasn’t cost effective. Apparently the average insurance premium for a dog over 16 years of age is somewhere between five and six thousand dollars per month. Based on my recent history, that’s actually not out of line.

Figures from Petplan, the biggest provider of pet insurance in the UK, show the average claim per condition has nearly doubled in five years to £715 for a dog and £501 for a cat.

Wendy Dean, from Warwickshire, said she was horrified when she was told that the insurance premiums for Jo-Jo and Robyn, her two five-year-old cocker spaniels, had risen by 58% and 68%.

You know what else has doubled over the past five years? My prostate.

“What we see is a tendency to select more expensive and elegant forms of diagnosis over something more pragmatic,” said Mr Price.
“If MRI is not clinically indicated as the necessary means of diagnosis when an x-ray would have been perfectly sufficient, we do tend to question why on earth that diagnostic technique was chosen.”

Although I suspect Mr. Price wouldn’t hold that view it if it was his health in question.

Nick Blaynay, president of the British Veterinary Association, agreed that it was becoming more expensive to insure a pet but said rising costs were for a number of reasons.

One was that there were now “extremely expensive techniques” available to vets.

Extremely expensive techniques like full body scans, complete blood analysis and expressing fully loaded anal glands.

However, he strongly denied vets were doing anything inappropriate.

“The vet should always put the welfare of the animal before any other consideration. If he doesn’t, shame on him.”

You know what’s really shameful? Taking an elderly dog’s temperature by sticking a thermometer up his ass.