You know when you go and rent a car they ask you whether or not you want to purchase insurance through them? Well one company in the pet health insurance industry is going to offer a program for boarding facilities which is going to be profitable to the boarding facility so I know we are going to start seeing it.

A company called Vsurance offers pet health insurance and they are offering the only program in the United States to provide coverage to boarding facilities for the boarding clients. A
premium of $2 a day will cover illness or injury while your pet stays at the boarding facility. For an additional premium of a flat $5 for up to a week and $15 for up to a month will cover up to $250 for accidental death. So basically if you pay about $20, your pet will be covered for illness, injury or accidental death with up to $1500 for injury/illness and $250 for accidental death for a one week stay. Reasonable??

Now all this might sound good to you because the vet bills will be covered if your dog becomes sick at the boarding facility, but heres what you see when you read between the lines. The boarding facility receives 50% of the premium as the administrator fee, so of course they are going to want to promote it. However with the insurance company only receiving $1 a day how is this plan going to pay for itself. 2 ways, one there are very few illnesses and injuries that actually occur while boarding and fewer yet that actually need $1500 worth of veterinary treatment. However there are exceptions and there will be claims so how does the insurance company justify this cost. I’ll let the CEO of Vsurance tell you in his own words from a press release to stock holders…

“This is a low risk and high demand program, which provides us an opportunity to service a growing desire among numerous pet owners. Further, this low risk program enables Vsurance to amass a database of pets and their owners, looking for comprehensive pet health insurance programs such as our get HIP Health Insurance for Pets program,” stated Russell Smith, CEO of Vsurance, Inc. “The strategy is essentially the same as in the sale of rental car insurance or
car insurance, which is offered to customers. This strategy has shown to be very effective in attracting new pet health insurance customers in the U.K. As the only provider of this service in the United States today, we expect to see considerable success.”

Basically it is a way to get new customers! I really liked pet insurance a few years ago. It was easy for customers to get andthe benefits were fantastic. Now it has taken the road of human
health insurance, it is expensive for the risk and many claims are starting to be scrutinized very closely for any problems and declined. Personally if you follow some of the advice I give you will have no need of pet insurance. If you are considering purchasing pet insurance, I would recommend a savings account with $2000 total in it for any emergencies that would require a trip to the vet. My suggestion is to use the monthly premiums of $25 to $30 to place
into the savings account until it reaches $2500.