Pet Insurance Comparison - Routine Care
Routine care is not offered by all pet insurance companies. We wanted to help explain the differences among some of those that do.
If there's one thing every new pet parent quickly learns, it's that the cost of routine care for your dog or cat quickly adds up to hundreds of dollars per year. Typical routine care costs break down as:
- Puppy: $700 in the first year
- Kitten: $450 in the first year
- Adult dog: $350/year
- Adult cat: $250/year
- Puppy and kitten estimations include costs for spaying/neutering, wellness exams, and vet recommended series of preventatives & vaccinations. Adult estimations remove the costs for spaying/neutering.
So naturally, we find many pet parents are looking for help managing these costs. Below you'll find a comparison of routine care plans from Embrace, VPI, Pets Best, and ASPCA pet insurance. Trupanion and Pet Plan do not offer help with routine care.
Company/Plan
| Add to Any Policy
| Reimbursement | Limits | Cost |
Embrace Wellness Plus
| Yes | Flexible | $400
| $299/yr or $28.95/month |
VPI Premier
| Yes | Fixed/Preset | per item
| $264/yr
|
Pets Best
| Yes | Fixed/Preset | per item
| $264/yr |
ASPCA
| No | UCR | 80% after deductible
| $264/yr1 |
Adding Routine Care to a Pet Insurance Policy
Each of the four companies provides you with options for routine care. With ASPCA you have to upgrade to a more expensive pet insurance plan in order to get routine care. Embrace, VPI, and Pets Best allow routine care to be added to any policy.
Why Flexible Reimbursement is Better Than Fixed
With Embrace, there are no preset limits on how much of your routine care allowance you can spend toward any particular item. This is the key difference between the plans. When you have fixed amounts per item (e.g. $50 to spend on preventative medications) it makes it more difficult to get value. In essence you end up either paying for items you don't need each year or getting too little back on items you do.
To help illustrate this point we've put together a chart showing ongoing routine care costs for an adult dog:
Routine Care Item
| Typical Cost | Average Cost |
Annual Check Up
| $30-$60 | $45 |
| Vaccinations/Boosters | $25-$85 | $40 |
Bloodwork & Fecal Test
| $40-$125 | $80 |
Flea, tick, & heartworm preventative
| $140-$240 | $190 |
| Nail Trimming | $5-$20 | $10 |
When you take these costs and go to get reimbursed, you see that Embrace is the only one where you come out ahead:
Routine Care Item
| Average Cost of Care | Embrace Wellness Plus | VPI CareGuard
Premier | Pets Best | ASPCA |
Annual Check Up
| $45 | $45 | $30 | $50 | $34 |
| Vaccinations/Boosters | $40 | $40 | $35 | $30 | $32 |
Bloodwork & Fecal Test
| $80 | $80 | $65 | $75 | $18 |
Flea, tick, & heartworm preventative
| $190 | $190 | $50 | $25 | $125 |
| Nail Trimming | $10 | $10 | $0 | $0 | $0 |
Total Reimbursement
| $365 | $180 | $180 | $108 |
Source: information obtained from each company's website March of 2011