My baby gurl has what is believed to be a torn ACL. She is going for x-ray/imaging to confirm, & then surgery after that to fix it if it is what the vet suspects.
We have some insurance for her; covers 50% up to $4000/year if I remember the terms correctly. I know that with human medial insurance there is a coordination of benefits process such that you may get more than if you only had one policy but you won’t make money if you have two policies that each pay 70%. Does such coordination of benefits exist for pet insurance? Would it pay to get a second policy from a different company for her?
I’m really sorry. I hope she gets through this quickly, easily, affordably, and returning to 100%
My concerns would first be waiting periods and pre-existing conditions clauses – apparently, a valid concern:
Pet insurers generally don’t cover pre-existing conditions. They also may require waiting periods before your pet is eligible for different types of coverages. It’s best to get pet insurance early in your pet’s life to help ensure any conditions they develop later in life will be covered. However, there may be alternative options like payment plans that make paying for pre-existing condition bills easier.
So, you’d really have to look hard to find a plan with neither, and … my suspicion is … they’d be far more expensive.
Putting aside preexisting conditions, the insurance industry follows Guiding Principles when dealing with overlapping coverage when two or more policies apply to the same loss or circumstance. In your hypothetical scenario of two policies covering 50% of the loss, each policy would pay 25%. However, if the insurers are unaware of the existence of the other policy, they might each pay their 50% share of the loss. Much depends on the language in the policies addressing other insurance.
My advice: Instead of paying the premium on two policies, it should be far more economical to increase the percentage of coverage on one policy.
The (existing) insurance company wanted something like 18 months of all records for her so trying to get a second policy possibly wouldn’t have worked anyway if they looked back that far in her records.
She went for 2-month post-op checkup yesterday & is on track with her healing of a 4-6 month recovery period.
High impact activities, specifically calling out “jumping (frisbee, catch)” are still to be discouraged. Need to follow up w/ vet to see if this includes going back up the stairs &/or getting on the bed. Prior to injury she’d sleep at the foot of the bed & then army crawl her way up to me for skritches in the morning when I looked at her & called her to me.