Two Sundays ago, my 3 year old female Bella got unexpectedly and dramatically sick. She was suddenly lame on her entire right side and her extremities all felt very hot to me. Given that it was a Sunday, I took her immediately to a local ER vet that is co-located with speciality veterinary practices (internal medicine, oncology, opthamology, surgery, cardiology). She was admitted with a dangerously high fever and placed on IV. Over the three days that she was there, she went through a series of diagnostic tests – xrays, full bloodwork, surgical veterinary consultation and evaluation, internal medicine consultation and evaluation, abdominal ultrasound, and more bloodwork to check for infectious diseases (hemobartonella, mycoplasma, tick-borne diseases, and toxoplasmosis).

They gave her great care and her fever broke, so I took her home to care for her – she continues (knock wood) to improve every day, but we don’t really have a diagnosis as all tests came back either normal or negative for infection (shrug). The grand total of the bill was $3,441.00.

I filed my claim in the coming days. They required the actual emergency veterinary paperwork as well as two years* worth of history from Bella’s regular vet, including doctor’s notes (* I haven’t had Bella for two years, so they accepted the 15 months of veterinary notes that I do have). The forms themselves served as the cover sheet for faxes with Bella’s policy number pre-populated as well as my own information – I downloaded all of this right from their website and it was VERY easy.

PetPlan is sending me a check for $2,208.00. Because this was emergency and/or speciality vet care, my coinsurance was 30%. They calculated their 70% responsibility from the total vet bill and then subtracted my $200 deductible on the policy. The claim was closed in a matter of days. My monthly premium per cat is $14.95 (although that may go up for Bella after this large claim).