After everything we went through with Charleston, Vinny and I decided that we should really get Pet Insurance for Hank. If we’d had insurance for Charlie, we’d have a much bigger savings right now.

When it came time to wade through the different insurance companies and plans, I was pretty overwhelmed. There are lots of companies, some with some pretty reputable names behind them (i.e. ASPCA). I got through it by doing what I always do: I made a list.

By making a chart of all the companies with the pros and cons it my decision was much easier to make. I ended up going with Pet’s Best Basic Plan.

My advice for people embarking on an insurance search is:
1. Know what you want the insurance for. In our case, we wanted to know that if anything disastrous happened again we would not have to worry that we could not afford to give Hank the health care he needed.
2. Make sure you know if you have a deductible and what that is.
3. Find out how they define a “pre-existing condition.” Some companies consider anything that happens in the previous insured year a pre-existing condition in the next insured year.
4. How do they pay claims? Do they pay a straight percentage or is the total based on a pre-determined schedule with maximum amounts for each specific procedure.

I found a decent article from The AP about Pet Insurance and thought that this was a really good point:

Hemstreet said pet insurance won’t save people with healthy dogs much money, but can make the difference if a dog has a serious illness or accident. “I think pet insurance is for the person who will do anything to treat their pet and save their pet,” he said, noting that advanced treatments like chemotherapy and transplants are becoming more common. “They can do all this stuff, but it gets pretty expensive.”

Do you have Pet Insurance? What kind? What do you think?