USA pet insurance companies are hoping that someday pet owners will catch up with their European counterparts. A recent survey of American pet owners suggested that approximately three percent of them had purchased pet health insurance for their family pet. A veterinarian who was interviewed after the survey was stunned by the results. She felt that the survey was generous and believed that the true figure was actually less then one percent (based on the numbers of her patients that had health care insurance).In Europe, approximately twenty-five percent of all pet owners have some sort of pet insurance on their pets. The numbers are even higher in Sweden, where approximately fifty percent of all pet owners rely on pet health insurance to help pay their pets medical expenses.
Some experts believe that the reason so many pet owners in the United Kingdom have pet health care insurance is because of an act of law passed in 1971. This stated that dog owners are liable for any accident that their pet is found responsible for. This means, for example, that if a dog darts out into traffic and causes a seven car pile up, the dog’s owner is responsible for paying all the damages. Unwilling to dip into their own pockets to cover their pet’s misadventures, pet owners in the United Kingdom opt to purchase something called third party liability insurance.
Many American pet owners do not realize that there are similar pet liability insurance plans available in the United States. Pet owners who would like to purchase pet liability insurance to cover any damages their pets might be responsible for, should be aware that certain breeds of dogs are listed as high risk insurance cases and that the owners would be required to pay higher than normal insurance policies.
It is unclear why more pet owners in the United States don’t purchase pet health insurance. One possibility is that pet owners simply do not realize how expensive pet health care really is. Fifteen minutes spent in a veterinarian’s office can sometimes cost as much as a hundred dollars! When a pet owner finds themselves facing the cost of an emergency surgery or has to take their family pet to a university hospital to have an illness treated, they quickly find themselves wishing they had something to help cover the enormous vet bills. All too often pet owners who find themselves in an emergency situation are forced to euthanize their beloved pet for economic reasons.
Pet owners who are city dwellers probably feel that they do not need to worry about something like pet health insurance because as their pets live inside, what accidents could possibly occur. What these pet owners don’t realize is that illness can sometimes affect house pets the hardest because their immune systems haven’t had a chance to build up any resistance.
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