I was first in line to vote this morning at the Sixth Street Elementary School here in Silver City. My wife and I walked over about 6:45 and we had the place to ourselves, other than the poll workers. We had been up for a while because our 18 year old dog, Darcie, wakes us up every morning between 5:30 and 6 AM.
Who needs an alarm clock when you have Darcie? Actually, that's not really my first thought when I hear her walking around so early in the morning.
Over at Scratchings and Sniffings we've been doing a series of posts on Alice the lab mix owned by my good friends, Phil and Martha. Alice has been pretty sick and you can read about her case here and the last update here.
I thought it might be interesting to run some numbers on Alice's medical bills and see how Phil and Martha would have fared had they had a policy from PurinaCare for Alice. Phil is a writer and has about four other jobs and Martha is a second year nursing student so you can imagine that they are not exactly rolling in dough.
Let's say I had convinced them to purchase a PurinaCare without Preventive Care Policy for Alice with a $250 deductible. The idea would be to pay a little bit every month in order to make sure if something serious came up they would not have to worry about paying for the best care around, for Alice.
I ran a quote for Alice (young lab mix) on this type of policy and it turns out that she could have this type of coverage for about $31.83 per month. For perspective, that's about what Phil and I spent at the Buffalo bar last Tuesday for our weekly pool game, plus liquid refreshments. You don't want to dehydrate while playing pool.
As you'll see, if you read the posts above about Alice's recent illness, she has been treated for chronic vomiting and weight loss for almost a month now. She has been to two local vets and her treatment culminated in surgery and four days of post surgical hospitalization over the last weekend.
The good news is that she is home, as of yesterday, and seems to be out of the woods for now. We don't know yet whether she is dealing with a chronic condition like IBD where she may need medication and a special vet diet for the rest of her life. Her biopsy results and response to treatment will tell us that in the days to come.
The less than good news is that Phil will be putting somewhere around $1500 dollars on the credit card for her medical care over the last month. I did try to comfort Phil by telling him that if we lived in a big city his bill would have been even more than $1500, most likely. Little comfort when you are waiting for your first big break in the publishing business.
So, what would Phil have paid out of his pocket had he bought the policy we described above? Let's do the math -- and bear in mind that these numbers are estimates based on Alice's quote and that the actual numbers would be dictated by the actual terms of the policy and the underwriting process. But this estimate should be pretty close. Alice had no pre-existing conditions that would come into play and she has always been a very healthy dog.
Phil would have had to pay the deductible of $250 off the bat. That would have left a balance of around $1250.00. All PurinaCare policies have a 20% co-pay so Phil would have been responsible for 20% of the $1250.00 or another $250.00. So, my estimate has Phil paying around $500 of the $1500 bill with $1000.00 in reimbursement coming from PurinaCare.
Of course, if Phil and Martha would renew the policy annually, they would continue to receive coverage for the rest of Alice's life. Medical care for a chronic condition like IBD could result in significant annual expenses.
I've always marveled at what a healthy dog Alice is. Phil, Alice and I have put in literally hundreds of miles on the local trails and Alice puts in twice as much actual mileage with her back and forth waiting for her slow human companions. Yet, even with a healthy young dog you can run into an unexpected series of events like those that have affected Alice, Phil and Martha.
That's what Pet Health Insurance is all about.