Think You Won’t Need Pet Insurance?

Each year the American Pet Products Association does a survey and report about how much money is spent in the U.S. by pet owners on our favorite furry friends. The total is now close to $60 Billion. At the top of the list are food and supplies, of course, but vet care is #3 with over 25% of that spend totaling over $15 Billion! Digging further, at the top of the breakdown for each pet owner’s annual pet-related expenses is Surgical Vet Visits at $621.00.

Anyone who has had a pet isn’t surprised by these numbers. Pets are expensive, and they are a wonderful luxury. When you adopt a pet you take on an incredible responsibility beyond feeding and letting them outside. We would argue they are worth every penny and have always provided as much care as necessary to our dogs. And in all honesty, we don’t think twice about buying them what they need or what we want to get for them. We buy good food, we get them all kinds of toys and treats, and even have multiple beds around the house for their use. They’ve never missed an annual checkup with the vet and when they are sick or injured we immediately get them the medical care they require. This is pretty typical of most pet owners we know.

Unlike most pet owners, we also carry Pet Insurance for our two dogs. Years ago we were in a situation when we needed it but didn’t have it. Our dogs now (3 and 4 years old) have been covered since the day we brought them home from the rescue and it’s been fortunately true that we haven’t needed it… yet. While we’ll always say it’s better to have it and not need it, we pretty much expect it’s only a matter of time before it becomes worthwhile. Our dogs are active and play hard, and goodness knows they eat just about anything that interests them, so it’s only a matter of time and the odds are against us that they’ll never require emergency veterinary care.

So we know the responsibilities, we know the statistics and the costs, and we’ve taken measures to make sure we’re financially covered in the event of a veterinary emergency and/or long-term care, but for the most part we don’t think about it and life goes on. We hope we don’t ever need to use our insurance. That would mean we would have an entire life without sickness, injuries, or accidents. Not to be pessimistic, but that’s not likely and those instances are more in the ‘WHEN’ category than the ‘IF’. And that’s when Facebook brought the ‘WHEN’ reality to light.

I’m on Facebook and I see the site GoFundMe.com running ads on my page for promoting their platform. There are a lot of good causes on GoFundMe, and this ad happened to feature their Category of Animals & Pets: Raise money for your vet bills, emergency pet surgeries, and more.

It’s a great ad; it gets my attention; and I’m immediately struck by three thoughts.

• Thought One: Damn, that’s some good targeting. How could I NOT stop to view this ad when it features not only a dog, but a big old check? Now we add a smiling healthy couple in a beautiful backdrop, and definitely don’t discount that their dog looks very similar to one of our dogs… and I have no choice but to stop and read what this is. And I did.
• Thought Two: $6000.00 for Vet Bills! This couple had to raise over $6,000.00 for help with their vet bills. That’s a lot of money and I know it’s not uniquely high since our much beloved Sadie cost us over $7,000.00 within 12 months for two blown ACL’s. The vet bill from each of the two surgeries was around $3,500.00
• Thought Three: I wonder if they had any pet insurance at all? The highest most deductibles would go is $1,000, and they needed to raise over $6K. So either they had a per-incident limit or some other exclusion which denied coverage, or like most pet owners, they didn’t have any coverage at all.

I clicked through to learn more and immediately my heart went out to these folks. Emmy, their one-year old female German Shepherd was diagnosed with severe hip dysplasia/subluxation in both her hips and required total hip replacement.

[NOTE] None of the following should be interpreted as any sort of criticism for any of these individuals which did not have Pet Insurance. That would be mean and cruel and goodness knows they are suffering enough. Also, in many cases these animals were abandoned and not rescued until already injured. The point is animals get sick and injured all the time, and vet bills cost a lot of money. If you don’t think it’ll happen to you (we pray you’re correct, truly), take a look at GoFundMe and you might reconsider.

Her loving owner, Rebecca, a young recent college graduate, did have CareCredit and had already racked up $1,500 in vet bills the previous year with Emmy. Due to having CareCredit, other fund relief programs denied her, and it was too late for Pet Insurance to help since it was now a pre-existing condition. So now Rebecca was facing the toughest question – Can she get the $6,000.00 she needs to save her dog’s life? I’ll skip ahead and let you know the good news is Rebecca did get her funding, Emmy got her surgery, and both appear to be doing well.

Unfortunately, Rebecca’s story isn’t unique. When reading Rebecca’s campaign information, I learned that GoFundMe.com has an entire category dedicated to funding campaigns for causes related to Animals & Pets with the description tag of ‘Raise money for your vet bills, emergency pet surgeries, and more.’

When I saw it had its own category, I knew it was big. When I clicked into it, I was floored to see how many live campaigns they were running. THOUSANDS. Even the site won’t give you an actual number (although I suspect this has more to do with not wanting to label the campaigns with a number to make sure they don’t affect the performance based on this listing or ‘ranking’), but it does say ‘… of thousands’.

Damn. THOUSANDS of campaigns to help individuals give their pet’s the best medicine and care available. (Quick side note.. wouldn’t it be fun to win the lottery and just come in here and make all of these hit their goals one day? That would be awesome.)

So there were ten listings on each page and a still unknown number of pages. I skipped ahead to page 13 and took a sampling. Here are the campaigns and the funds each is hoping to raise to help with their veterinary costs:

• Ogilvie the Orange Cat. $1,200
• Cash’s Medical, Has Cushings Disease. $1,250
• Help Save Remington. $1,300
• Elaine’s Surgery and Vet Bills. $5,000
• Titan’s Surgery Fund. $2,500
• Help Last Hope Rescue SAVE MORE! $800
• Please help Virginia & her Poms. $10,000
• Save Betty. $1,000
• The Ace Fund. $3,000
• The Christmas Miracle. $3,500

Collectively, they needed $29,550.00 for vet bills, surgeries, etc. The average needed to raise is $2,955.00 each. This sounds about right given the national average cost of emergency vet surgery to cost right around $3K.

Since this is a small sample and it does include a couple of extremes, it’s possible our numbers are not truly representative of the total average. For a more conservative number, we take the highest and lowest outliers and remove them from the equation. This means Virginia with her $10K and Last Hope with their $800 are excused from our sample, leaving us with $18,750 for the remaining 8 campaigns. That’s still an average of $2,343.00 for veterinary expenses.

Just to be sure I tried this again on another page on another day:

• Tach the Border Staffy. $7,000
• Help Get My Puppies Back. $5,000
• Broken Boy Needs Christmas Help. $10,000
• Canyon Has Two Broken Femurs HELP. $3,000
• Help Hank the Lab. $7,000
• Help Save Punchy McDonald. $3,700
• Save Laguna and Her Leg. $3,000
• Mr. Magoo’s Medical Fund. $3,500
• Bobo and Harry Medical/Foster Fund. $3,500
• Help King Tux. $3,800

With this sample all the numbers have all gone up. The total is $49,500, making an average of $4,950.00 in veterinary expenses. Even if we again toss out the outliers ($10K and $3K), it’s still $4,562 per pet.

And looking closer these weren’t old and sick pets. A couple were abandoned and neglected rescues, but many were your normal young and healthy family dog or cat before an unfortunate accident occurred.

The stories were all heartbreaking and the associated costs were staggering. It was great to see these animals had folks kind enough to try and raise these funds to make them healthy again.

As we’ve shared before, we’re big advocates of Pet Insurance. We know first-hand about how some of the earlier polices available ten years ago were not really worth it, and how some programs available today are still just as horrible. However, we also know the industry for Pet Insurance has matured and there are good plans available.

Plans and costs will vary, of course, but the typical cost is about $35/month per pet. With the typical surprise vet bill averaging $3,000.00, that means you can insure your dog for over seven years and be covered for all that and more!

I hope all dogs live a long and healthy accident and injury-free life. And many will. But I also know that most will, at one time or another, get sick or injured. Dogs play hard, they run like fools, they chase things on instinct with no regard to their surroundings and have absolutely no discerning tastes when it comes to their palette. They eat just about anything. They run out on ice, they jump in water without knowing the depth, and have absolute blindness for anything and everything that is NOT the object of their attention (think ‘ball’ or ‘squirrel’). And when you get more than one together, the odds of a mishap exponentially increase. The point is, dogs get sick and hurt. Veterinary care costs a lot of money. If your only reason for not getting your pet covered is you don’t think you’ll need it, we encourage you to take a look at GoFundMe for yourself, and any of their similar competitors. THOUSANDS of campaigns for sick and injured dogs and cats. Not all of these animals had the opportunity to get Pet Insurance, but ALL of them could have used it.

If you’d like to learn more about Pet Insurance, please check out the following:
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[list_item icon=”fa-paw” color=”696868″]How To Shop For Pet Insurance – The 5 Main Criteria.[/list_item]
[list_item icon=”fa-paw” color=”696868″]Review of the Top 7 Pet Insurance Providers.

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