I was just reading about pet insurance (not for any particular reason) and wondered whether pet insurance companies can decline to pay for the animal’s care and just insist it is put down? And if not, what about agricultural or other kinds of “working” animal healthcare insurers?
I can’t imagine they would/could. That isn’t really insurance if they don’t have to take any risk. With regular insurance - there is a limit on claims and if (not sure about this in all places/cases) they want to fire you - they can (or at least could if you didn’t have a group plan). I am assuming there is no Obama care or single payer legislation in the works for pets, so it would probably just be governed under contract law.
People are very particular about there pets - I am pretty sure it would be business suicide for them to offer to pay to have your pet put down (unless it was suffering and the person wanted that). I would assume they just wouldn’t renew coverage.
Yes, that occurred to me when writing the OP - hence the use of “animal” - it was originally just going to be about pets, but I should imagine (although I may be wrong) the average farmer or working-horse-owner doesn’t care that much about the particular animal. Although presumably in those cases the insurance company would have to pay for the price of a replacement as well.
Most people who have insurance on their horse only have it for certain medical procedures (usually colic surgery) and the death of the animal.
it’s not common to have equine insurance that is intended to cover ordinary veterinary care (surgical/death insurance isn’t terribly common either among the general recreational horse-owning population). If I had to guess why, it’s because large animal vets extend credit as a rule, 30-90 days, and take payments. (a common joke is “never let your horse hear you got your vet bills paid off”).
The entire mode of care is somewhat different. If your dog collapses suddenly, you grab him and take him to an emergency vet, where they do some diagnostics find a problem and do, say, cardiac surgery. Dog lives. If your horses collapses suddenly, first of all you might not notice right away because they’re in the field or the barn, not following you around the house. So assuming they live till morning you find a horse down and unable to stand, you call the vet and hope your horse is still alive and there’s something obvious to be done when she gets there, because a downed horse ain’t going anywhere. Field diagnostics are extremely limited, so you don’t run up much of a bill. No one would do surgery on a horse unable to stand. Maybe some fluids and sedation while you make up your mind.
the one thing you can run up bills on like crazy is lameness. There’s ever so many things to try. Your stall rest+anti inflammatories+cold water, your field xrays, your mobile flouroscope, your nerve blocks, your EPM testing (a a parasitic disease) and maybe treatment “just in case”, your genetic tests, your specialty shoeing, joint injections, … next thing you know the horse is getting a damn massage and going for swims in a pool. But no insurance company would insist a horse that’s merely lame be put down. A more sensible way to handle it is to just have a coverage limit, like dental plans have.