The deductible is the amount of money you have to pay out of pocket on veterinary care before your insurance kicks in. It's just like the deductible you probably have on your car and home owners insurance policy.
At PurinaCare, we offer a choice of deductibles.
For PurinaCare Without Preventive Care the deductible choices are $100, $250, $500 and $1000. For
PurinaCare Plus Preventive Care the choices are $250, $500 and $1000. As with your own car, homeowners and probably health insurance, the higher the deductible the lower the monthly insurance premium.
And this is the important part. Our deductibles are annual deductibles, not per incident deductibles.
With a per incident deductible you will pay the deductible each time you visit the vet for different problems. Say your dog develops diarrhea this week and you go in to see the vet. When you file the claim the per incident deductible is deducted from any potential reimbursement. If next week your dog gets and ear infection and you file another claim you'll pay another per incident deductible. If he needs surgery the week after that you'll pay another per incident deductible.
With an annual deductible you pay it once every year of policy coverage. Each time you go to see the vet eligible expenses apply towards that deductible just like most human health insurance. After you've met the annual deductible the policy covers you in full less any co-payment. With PurinaCare the co-pay is always 20%.
Why would a company offer a per incident as opposed to an annual deductible? In my humble opinion I think it has something to do with pricing and psychology. If, for instance you see that the policy you are thinking about buying has a low deductible, say $50 as opposed to one that is $250, you might think you are getting a bargain. And by having a per incident deductible, the insurer is able to give you a slightly lower monthly premium because they are limiting their liability by the amount of the deductible for each claim.
Another watch out is if the company you are considering claims to have no deductible. Make sure you read the fine print on that. They just might not cover something like the physical exam that goes with the visit to the vet. That's just a deductible by another name. Sounds good though. Too good.
The per incident deductible is just one way a company might offer a lower priced policy while protecting themselves on each claim. When an insurer combines the per incident deductible with some of the other features well discuss later this week the math starts to work in their favor.
Stay tuned.