A single emergency visit for your sick or injured pet can set you back thousands of dollars or force you to make a heart-wrenching decision you don’t want to make. For around $20 to $40 per month, pet insurance is meant to make vet care affordable so you don’t have to worry about getting hit with an unexpected $5,000+ vet bill.
But, like all types of insurance, there are important limits and exclusions around what your pet insurance will cover. So it’s important to understand what your policy actually covers and what additional coverage types you may need to add to make sure you’re paying for a policy that actually fits your needs.
Every pet insurance policy is unique, but this breakdown of what pet insurance does and doesn’t cover will give you a sense of what to expect and what to look for as you compare plans and customize your coverage options.
Accident coverage
Even the most basic pet insurance policies will include accident coverage. Accidents include things like your dog accidentally swallowing a toy or your cat breaking their leg after landing wrong when they jumped from the top of your cabinets. It also includes traumatic injuries like cuts or bite wounds as well as pets who eat something toxic.
When an accident happens, pet insurance will typically cover all the costs, from the diagnostic tests needed to identify the problem to the surgeries, medications and overnight hospital stays needed to treat it.
Here are a few common examples of accidents that would be covered by a standard pet insurance policy from Lemonade, Liberty Mutual, USAA and other providers:
- Broken bones and fractures
- Cuts and wounds
- Animal bites (and animal attack-related injuries)
- Car accident-related injuries
- Foreign object ingestion
- Toxic ingestion like chocolate or grapes
- Heatstroke
- Other sudden internal or external injuries that aren’t disease-related
Illness coverage
Pet insurance that includes illness coverage will cover almost every other emergency that can send your pet to the vet, but can’t be considered an accident.
Urinary tract infections, skin allergies, heart disease and kidney failure are among the most common pet insurance claims that would be covered under the illness side of an “accident and illness” policy.
According to a recent report from Nationwide, the majority of the most common claims for both cats and dogs are illnesses. So this piece of your policy is key to ensuring you’ll get your money’s worth out of your pet insurance.
Here are some examples of what would be covered by pet insurance that includes illness coverage:
- Urinary tract infections
- Other types of infections
- Bladder stones or urinary crystals
- Active parasitic infestations including fleas and worms (but not routine preventative treatments or screenings)
- Allergies
- Asthma
- Cancer
- Arthritis
- Heart disease
Wellness plans for routine care
Wellness checkups, annual vaccines and other routine care that your pet needs to stay healthy are not covered by pet insurance. This includes things like prescription diets, supplements and other preventative care your pet might need. With that said, most insurers do offer wellness plans that you can add onto your insurance.
These plans aren’t insurance so much as an agreement to pay a certain amount for certain types of preventative care. This usually includes things like vaccines, a certain number of diagnostic tests including bloodwork and x-rays as well as one or two wellness checkups per year. Some wellness plans might even cover dental cleanings and spaying or neutering.
However, go over any wellness plan offered with your vet before enrolling. Depending on where you are and the specific routine care your pet needs, it may be cheaper to pay for each service as needed rather than spring for the added cost of a wellness plan.
In other cases, your vet might offer a wellness plan of their own that ends up being a better deal than the one you can get through pet insurance.
Depending on the plan, here are some services that you’ll usually find packaged into a wellness plan:
- Annual wellness visits
- Vaccines (either limited by a certain number per year or by type of vaccine)
- Flea, tick and worm prevention
- Diagnostic tests and screenings (usually limited to a certain number per year, type of test, or maximum reimbursement amount)
- Dental cleanings
- Microchipping
- Spay or neuter procedure
Is accident-only pet insurance worth it?
You can get accident-only coverage if you want to save on pet insurance. But keep in mind that, of the top 10 most common pet insurance claims Nationwide received, according to the report cited earlier, only two of the conditions for dogs and one for cats could be related to accidents. If you had accident-only pet insurance, the majority of the most common conditions that send your pet to the vet would not be covered.
More importantly, five of the top conditions for dogs and six of the top conditions for cats were chronic illnesses like allergies, arthritis or diabetes. If your pet is diagnosed with any of these when you don’t have a policy that covers illnesses, that diagnosis will be a pre-existing condition that all but one pet insurance provider will exclude from coverage.
That’s why the general recommendation is to get pet insurance while your furry friend is young. If you adopted an older pet that comes with preexisting conditions, however, opting for accident-only pet insurance may actually be more cost-effective.
Since you’ll have to pay out of pocket for any treatment related to their preexisting condition anyway, you may want to opt for the lower premium option and budget more money for your pet emergency fund to cover your out of pocket costs.
