Pet Insurance

befall their animals. But even pet parents who are vigilant about building a “rainy day fund” for their dogs, cats, or other critters can still find themselves out of their depth when emergencies strike, simply because they underestimate how expensive vet bills can become.

Case-in-point: In 2019, Healthy Paws Pet Insurance compiled a Cost of Pet Health Care Report that explored common pet accidents and illnesses in the U.S., average treatment costs for those issues, and more. One key section of the report detailed the most expensive insurance claims Healthy Paws had received in 2019 from its policyholders.

In one situation, a family had submitted claims totaling $56,533 to treat acute kidney failure in their seven-year-old Pitbull terrier. In another case, a pet owner with a 10-yearold Russian Blue feline named Hugo had racked up $34,830 in vet bills, between back surgery to resolve multiple herniated discs and additional treatments for everything from congestive heart failure to diabetes to pancreatitis.

In both cases, Healthy Paws Pet Insurance picked up 90 percent of the bill, leaving the pet parents with significantly smaller out-ofpocket expenses than they would have faced otherwise.

Growth in the Pet Insurance Sector

Anecdotes about pet parents saving a small fortune thanks to their pet insurance policies are helping drive growth to the sector. Indeed, Brian Macias, president of Embrace Pet Insurance—a leading pet insurance provider in the U.S.—tells Northern Express that more and more pet owners are starting to see the value of the coverage.

While routine vet expenses aren’t covered by pet insurance, Macias says the list of issues and expenses that pet insurance does pay for is still quite extensive. Specific treatments covered by pet insurance can include emergency veterinary care, hospitalizations, surgery, prosthetics and mobility devices, diagnostic testing, prescription food or medications, behavioral therapy, and more. Embrace reimburses “up to 90 percent” of these expenses, minus a deductible that policyholders get to choose upfront.

“The goal of pet insurance is to eliminate the financial burden for pet parents when those unexpected issues arise,” Macias explains. “Essentially, pet insurance is peace of mind for pet parents when they need it most.”

Beyond financial peace of mind, Macias thinks there are elements to the pet insurance customer experience that are winning new customers over, too. While pet insurance has often been described as “health insurance for your pets,” Macias says the industry doesn’t have some of the annoyances or shortcomings that often plague the health insurance market. For instance, many pet insurance providers— Embrace included—don’t have an equivalent of the physician networks that exist in the health insurance sector.

“So [policyholders] can visit any vet—in the U.S. and around the world—whenever an unexpected accident or illness occurs,” Macias says. “There are no networks, so the pet parent will pay the vet directly and then submit their claim to Embrace. Once the claim is processed, pet parents are reimbursed in as little as two days with direct deposit.”

Pet insurance also doesn’t usually come with the same sky-high premiums that health insurance for humans does. While Macias says it’s “difficult to pinpoint an exact cost” for a pet insurance policy, given the way that animal age, breed, and other factors can impact premiums, he notes that typical Embrace plans tend to range from $35-$50 per month for dogs and $15-$30 per month for cats.

More awareness around these details, Macias says, is helping drive growth in the world of pet insurance. Per NAPHIA, that market saw overall growth of 27 percent between 2020 to 2021, and some providers are growing even faster. Macias says Embrace “has more than tripled its business in the past three years.”

Tilford agrees that growth is on the way, even if he’s not seeing much of it yet locally. One early indicator, he says, is the increased interest in coverage from dog owners who tend to spend a lot of time exploring northern Michigan’s great outdoors with their four-legged best friends. Hikers, runners, hunters: These groups, he notes, are asking about pet insurance with greater frequency because they want to plan ahead for any potential injuries or accidents that might befall their highly active animals.

The other piece of the puzzle, Tilford thinks, is that more people are coming to terms with the fact that their “self-insuring” method isn’t working—at least not to cover those pricier vet bills. Pet insurance is the logical solution.

“It’s like life insurance,” Tilford says. “A lot of people say, ‘Well, I’m going to skip the life insurance and just invest the money or save it myself, because I’m not planning on dying young!’ But really, when people say, ‘Oh, I’ll save for that’ or ‘I’ll just put some money aside,’ I believe the vast majority of them never do. And then if something happens to their pet and they have a $3,500 vet bill, they end up putting that on a credit card, and then they start having credit problems. So I’d say, unless you’re really disciplined with your finances, you probably ought to look at the pet insurance option. Otherwise, you’re rolling the dice.”

Erin Anderson Whiting

Strategic thinking is what drives Anderson Whiting at her work helping nonprofits and organizations navigate big projects as a senior consultant for The Solvent Group, so it’s no surprise she’s developed a 20 years-running practical solution to the annual costumes game: just... be...a cat. Every year.

Reflecting on the tradition, she shares, “The energy required to be clever and cute was more than I could muster, so I found a packaged cat costume at Target that contained a mask and a tail. The next year I figured no one would remember I was a cat last year, so I could probably just repeat it. And then I did that again and again for 18 more years. The leotard gets a little more snug each year—I blame the washing machine—and I’ve gone through many pairs of tights, but I can mark the passage of time by the shrinking of my leotard and the fraying of my tail, and a lot of good memories.”

Gary Gatzke

Master of Disguise and Interlochen’s Associate Director of Continuing and Community Education Gary Gatzke is well known for a fine collection of haberdashery, but he’s also a whiz at the improv costume game. One of his best was in NYC, “I was at a Halloween party in Spanish Harlem dressed as Bjorn Ulvaeus, and two of my friends quickly jumped on the ABBA wagon. One dressed as Anni-Frid Lyngstad and the other as Agnatha Faltskog. We went out and became a Swedish sensation! I noticed later in photos how much I looked like my mother from her teenage years in Detroit when she went blonde.”

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