September Is National Pet Insurance Month so I’m going to talk about pet insurance in a two part series. Part 1 I will tell you about Nationwide Pet Insurance formerly VPI (Veterinary Pet Insurance) since this is the pet insurance company I use for Glory. Part 2 I will talk about pet insurance in general.

Part 1:

I’ve been in the Veterinary field for over 25 years, at the clinics I worked at we accepted pet insurance. The procedure would be the client comes in and has the work done on their animal, pays the bill and has us fill out and sign the pet insurance claim form for them to submit to their insurance company. Once submitted we may or may not have to submit the medical records for what was being claimed. There are many insurance companies out there and I’ve seen many come through our clinic. No matter what company the client had or what was being done they were all happy with their insurance company.

I have never had pet insurance for any of my animals since I work at a clinic and get a discount on my services and my pets usually are very healthy and need just routine care. A couple times they needed major surgery but it wasn’t anything that set me back. Last October I went to a breeders seminar at Veterinary Village (who does all my reproduction care)  and that is where I learned that if your going to be a breeder then pet insurance is a must and Nationwide Pet Insurance is the only company out there that will cover reproduction work. Since becoming Nationwide they changed their policies and have made them breeder friendly. It was then I signed Glory up for pet insurance as I knew I would be breeding her again last fall and it would be a surgical AI with the possibility of a c-section so after adding up the cost of the premiums/deductable and what I would be paying for all the work that would be done on Glory I would be ahead with having the pet insurance. Now if I don’t breed Glory and don’t have any major veterinary bills (which I hope I don’t) with her then that year the insurance company will be ahead but I will have the peace of mind knowing I have insurance if I need it.

I researched Nationwide Pet Insurance as they have three plans to fit your dogs needs. I went with whole pet with wellness (which cost’s me $93.90 a month) as that is the plan that will cover everything I need for Glory’s reproduction work starting with the progesterone tests to the surgical AI to the ultrasound and then the c-section plus anything else that would come up. I signed up the middle of November having to pay a prorated cost for November and then paid for one month in advance. I called a representative from Nationwide, gave her all my info and Glory’s info, she asked me about Glory’s medical history and told me she would submit the enrollment form and once it was approved Glory’s coverage would begin two weeks later. This was one of the other reason’s why I chose Nationwide for coverage as unlike other companies who require a one year grace period before they will cover ACL (cruciate ligament) surgery Nationwide will cover surgery on not one but both knees after the two week grace period, but you need to have the Whole Pet with Wellness plan.

The process for breeding Glory went like this:

• Progesterone testing
• Pre surgical bloodwork
• Surgical AI using frozen semen
• Ultrasound after 30 days
• Radiograph after 55 days
• C-section

After each Veterinary visit I paid my bill at the Veterinary Clinic I then filled out my Nationwide Pet Insurance claim form and faxed it along with a copy of the receipt back to Nationwide. You can also email the form if you like. Once they got the claim they reviewed it and if they needed additional information they would contact me or the Veterinary clinic for the medical records (they never contacted me or the clinic for any records during this whole claim process). I could log in to my online account to check the status of the reimbursement. They reimbursed me within two weeks on all my claims. The first reimbursement was minus my $100 deductible.  When you sign up for the pet insurance Nationwide offers a $100 or a $250 deductible, I chose to go with the $100. Nationwide reimburses you 90% of what you paid the Veterinary Clinic. The whole process was very easy and straight forward.

To see what is all covered in Nationwide’s plans click HERE. Now in the what’s covered page it won’t list the reproduction work but believe me it is covered. They will also cover the semen collection but not any sort of shipping on anything. I used frozen semen so I had to pay for the shipping of the semen.

To see what isn’t covered you can click HERE. Nationwide states that they don’t cover pre-existing conditions but if your pet has been cleared by a Veterinarian for at least 6 months for that condition you may be able to get that conditioned covered.

Glory’s reproduction costs and reimbursements:

submitted                             paid
12/2/15       $114.90                               $13.41(minus my $100 deductible) – progesterone testing
12/3/15       $131.28                               $118.15 – progesterone testing
12/5/15       $136.64                               $122.98 – progesterone and pre surgical bloodwork
12/8/15       $932.33                               $551.10 – surgical ai
1/6/16         $99.14                                 $89.23 – ultrasound
2/3/16         $2622.16                             $2359.94 – radiograph and c-section including dewclaws on puppies

Other medical care:

submitted                             paid

3/22/16      $53.12                                 $47.81 – yearly vaccinations
3/31/16      $209.88                               $188.89 – revolution treatment for one year
4/7/16        $68.56                                 $61.71 – yearly vaccinations and heartworm testing

A breakdown on Veterinary cost, reimbursed and premiums paid:

Veterinary Costs from 12/15 – 9/16   $4368.01

Nationwide reimbursed                     $3553.22

Jo paid  in vet care                           $814.79

Premiums paid                                 $1025.50

With what I paid in vet care and premiums of $1840.29 I had a savings of $2527.72 so far in less than a year of having Nationwide as my pet insurance company.

Nationwide also has a refer a friend program. If you refer a friend and they mention you referred them to Nationwide you will get a $20.00 Amazon gift card. So if you were thinking about getting pet insurance and you are going to sign up with Nationwide then be sure to mention my name 🙂

As a side note I’m not plugging Nationwide just so I can get a gift card, what I have wrote about my experience is the truth and I will continue to use Nationwide as my pet insurance for Glory and any future breeding bitches as long as their coverage doesn’t change. I’ve been very happy with the service and time frame on my claims for this past year!