Pet insurance-question

[Teddy2018]

Hi everyone, teddy is about 4 years old now and recently had a scare where he ate a piece of corn cob that he wasn’t supposed to.

Long story short, we took him to the ER and vet , performed V test and also X-rays, more X-rays with barium. Corn cob never showed up in V or in stools( just kernels). In X-rays , there was linear flow and no obstruction. He’s out of the woods.

With this incident, it nearly cost $2,300.00 out of pocket. my question is, is it too late to get pet insurance for future incidences/mishaps? Will pet insurance cover a claim if future accidents happen where he eats something he’s not supposed to? Labradors are notorious for eating about anything, so I’m not sure if this would qualify as “pre-existing”


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[smartrock]

Interesting question and I'm afraid I do not have the answer. We have insurance for both our current beasts, we went through all that you describe on 2 previous dogs without having insurance. I did not get insurance on them after their surgeries, oh yeah, I left out that they both had to have surgery for an obstruction, and fortunately they did not require those services again. I did become somewhat of an expert at giving hydrogen peroxide to make the sock-fiend throw up a few more socks over the next few years. I went ahead and got it on both our current dogs when we got our younger boy, worried that they would play too rough and some orthopedic incident would occur.

I looked at a sample policy online by the company through which we have insurance (Healthy Paws). I'm guessing the following item on the list of exclusions would pertain to your situation:

"Conditions arising from a specific activity if the same or a similar activity occurred prior to the pet policy effective date and displayed the propensity for the activity to recur and cause injury or illness to your pet;"

To me that sounds like if your dog eats something they shouldn't and you know it's within the realm of possibility for your dog to do again, you're out of luck. I did not look at my specific policy to find this, a sample policy was on their website under Frequently Asked Questions. So maybe you can do some investigation into some health plan companies to see if something like that shows up. And if not, I'd probably call the company and ask directly what would happen in that situation. Good luck, emergency care can be quite a burden.

eta: interestingly, the policy also excludes:

1. Any claim for loss from a nuclear incident as defined in the Nuclear Liability Act, nuclear explosion or contamination by radioactive material;
   
   It wouldn't have occurred to me to check on this incident.