Originally published at: Lemonade wants to make sure vet bills don't cripple you with pet insurance starting at $10 a month | Boing Boing
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Do they do phrenology on dogs?
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$120 a month for a healthy 7 year old dog? I’ll shop around, thanks.
wow. that was substantially more expensive than my Bella’s policy with Petplan. And now they’re going to send me spam email and physical junkmail. Great job guys!
I clicked on this topic on the BBS because I wondered what a lemonade would have to do with vets and pets.
I leave none the wiser.
That is a good question. Nowhere in their FAQ are they saying how they came up with their bonkers name or what it has to do with insurance.
I’m sure some tech bro thought it made them sound friendly and non-threatening?
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“Ok, team, we’ve spent all of our VC capital making an lie detecting AI - but it’s totally inaccurate. Now what?”
“Make lemonade!”
“What?”
“If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. We’ll make some “do it on the interweb with AI” start up and say the AI makes it “disruptive”! We can even call the company “Lemonade”! Bwahahahahaha!11!1”
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I assume that it is because you will be covered when Beyonce goes at you with a baseball bat
This is some seriously scamy shit.
Pet insurance is a huge scam.
Not because it’s not a good idea, but because majority of vets and clinics are independent and don’t take insurance. My company offers pet insurance it as a benefit but I have yet to find a vet that will accept it. Best I’ve experienced so far is a 20% discount.
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Most pet insurances don’t work at all like human insurance. Most are of the “you pay the vet, then submit your claim for reimbursement” model. There are some that involve the vets directly, but as you note, many (less so with the inroads of corporate vet hospital ownership) vets are fiercely independent.
I’m involved with the industry, so all I’m going to say is that there are vast differences in offerings, and before you buy any plan from any company, read the policy language. As with any contract, you can’t make any assumptions.
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I don’t always insure by pet, but when I do it is with Mr. Bobo’s pet insurance.
It’s really hard as a pet owner to know what coverage will be useful. The insurance companies have full time professional actuaries who know what people actually need, and have worked out ways to make it seem like that is what you are getting, but are, in fact, not. A friend’s policy has something like “$50,000 total benefits!” (Or something like that). But then has low, lifetime caps on individual code numbers, like a $300 lifetime cap on payouts for chronic conditions like diabetes. :-/
With health insurance contracts you can usually assume carefully calculated malice; though not much beyond that.
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Yeah, this is why benefit schedule plans suck IMHO (and the company I currently work for sells them as well as non-BSA plans). They’re good to help with expenses at lower premium rates, but that’s honestly not what people really expect from insurance. People expect unlimited benefits/whatever the expenses are to be covered. Those plans exist, but they’re not cheap. Given the rising cost of Vet care (and I can go on an hours long bitchy rant about that one…), “affordable” insurance means limits, often severe ones depending on what company and what plan you went with.
I’m not going to say what company I work for, or try to sell anyone here anything, but I’m first and foremost a licensed veterinarian, and pet/owner welfare is #1 for me. The folks I work for know I’m prepared to walk if that line is ever crossed. Anyone here can feel free to hit me up privately if you’ve got questions about pet insurance/pet medical questions, and I’ll try to answer as best as I can.
Otherwise, there’s a good guy named Dr. Doug Kenney (also a Vet) that I met through work, who is independent, but has a blog and podcast about the industry. And he is truly independent. He meets with people from most of the companies, and calls it as he sees it (sometimes he’s got good things to say about us, sometimes not so much…). https://www.petinsuranceguideus.com/
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Yeah, technically “property and casualty” insurance contracts, but they’re just as “lawyered up” and “court defensible” as your car or home insurance. And just like any P&C, you’ve got some decent companies (like my home insurance (not through my employer) who really went to bat for me, and earned my loyalty), and a number of not really that benign ones as well.
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