Is puppy wellness coverage worth it?
Finding the right wellness plan for your puppy’s preventive and routine care is one of the best ways to ensure your puppy’s long-term health as they continue to grow. Ensuring you continuously take your puppy to the vet for wellness care and check-ups is a great way to prevent potential health issues from cropping up later in their life.
It may seem overcautious to begin a wellness insurance plan with your puppy while they are still young, but there are tremendous benefits to starting their coverage early. Getting a wellness plan for your puppy early on in their life will help you to avoid navigating coverage for pre-existing conditions that many insurance providers will not cover. Additionally, it ensures that your puppy qualifies for coverage, as some providers also have a cap on the age requirements of dogs that they cover under their wellness plans.
Overall, getting a wellness plan to cover preventive and routine care for your puppy as soon as possible is a smart, worthwhile decision. You can ensure your puppy will be taken care of throughout their life, consistently receiving the appropriate wellness and routine care to keep them as healthy as possible and avoid potential major health issues in the long run. Overtime, investing in a wellness plan for your puppy will help you save money and avoid those expensive visits to the vet for emergency situations.
What do puppy wellness plans cover?
Insurance providers differ widely on what their wellness plans cover. Separate from typical pet insurance plans, wellness plans cover different procedures and treatments for pets.
Most pet insurance providers offer plans related to illness, injury, or a combination of injury and illness coverage. These plans cover for the unexpected: an accident or illness that arises and needs to be treated. Pet insurance plans typically cover procedures like x-rays, surgeries, and other treatments to fix ailments like broken bones, infections, and even long-term illnesses like arthritis and cancer.
Wellness plans that focus on preventive and routine care instead cover treatments ahead of these emergency situations. These plans insure procedures including:
- Wellness checkups: Regular visits to the vet to check on the puppy’s vitals and holistic health status.
- Vaccines: All necessary shots puppies typically get within the first years of their life.
- Preventive medical procedure: Spaying and neutering, and other necessary procedures.
- Pest prevention: Treatment to prevent ticks, fleas, and other pests that can infect puppies.
Typically, these plans are either offered as an add-on or rider to pet insurance or offered as a different plan altogether. Depending on what the insurance provider offers, there may be a holistic plan available that covers all of these various wellness options, or add-on opportunities to customize your wellness coverage in addition to an existing puppy insurance coverage plan.
How are puppy wellness premiums determined?
There are a variety of details that contribute to determining the overall monthly premium for puppy wellness plans:
- Breed: Your puppy’s breed will contribute to the overall cost of your wellness plan. If your puppy’s breed is more susceptible to health issues than other breeds, your premium will be higher than average.
- Age: Typically, the older your puppy gets, the more money you can expect to pay.
- Wellness plan coverage: Different insurance agencies offer various options for wellness coverage. Depending on what you want to be covered in your overall wellness plan, your monthly premium will vary.
- Insurance plan details: Your choice of copay, reimbursement percentage, and deductible will contribute to the overall monthly premium you pay.
How to choose the best puppy wellness plan?
Choosing the best wellness plan for your puppy requires you to take a few details into consideration. Here are some things to keep in mind throughout the process:
- Understand what your puppy needs: Take your puppy’s breed and any potential conditions that are common for that breed into consideration as you start to compare different wellness plan offerings. If your puppy is more susceptible to certain kinds of injuries or illnesses, you will want to ensure your wellness plan covers preventive and routine care related to these ailments. Additionally, you will want to take your puppy’s unique health status into consideration to ensure their specific needs will be met in terms of their routine wellness care.
- Compare wellness plan offerings and pricing: Just because a wellness plan offers you the cheapest option upfront does not mean it is the best deal. As you are narrowing down your wellness plan choices for your puppy, you will want to review what is all included in the overall coverage. Some plans do not cover all costs related to wellness care – check to make sure they offer everything you need for a monthly premium that works for you.
- Review their reputation: You will want to review your wellness plan provider’s reputation and how their overall reimbursement process works before you sign up for a specific plan. Take a look at the current customers’ reviews to gain a better understanding of how they process claims, how they handle issues and their overall ratings from trusted organizations including the Better Business Bureau. We’ve also written a review on certain providers that can be helpful for you to decide on which insurer to go with.