Showing posts with label insurance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label insurance. Show all posts

Monday, July 1, 2013

Progress Check

Today was Lucy's appointment with the vet to check the progress of her healing. I have had many dreams of riding her on the beach and through the woods leading up to today, and I felt very nervous about this appointment. I could have done shockwave or other therapies and I chose not to, mostly for financial reasons. What if I made the wrong choice? What if I should have kept her on stall rest? I just hoped she had improved and that maybe I could ride her soon.

I called the vet at 8:30am to see when they would be out, and the receptionist said that she didn't have the schedule finalized yet, and needed to call me back. Ok, no problem! I went back to work and waited for the call. Two hours passed, which is an exceptionally long time, and then she finally called back. She said that the ultrasound machine was not working correctly, and they couldn't come out today. I was so gutted, I cannot even tell you. I had persuaded my boss to let me work from home today, I had gotten up at the crack of dawn to start work early in case they had to come out first thing this morning, and I had waited three months and spent over $4,000 to get to this point. Not to mention I made this appointment almost a month ago, and the only piece of equipment they needed was the one thing that wasn't working! I was so overwhelmed and upset, but I remained totally polite and said I understood, and agreed to reschedule the appointment. The first date that worked for both of us was two weeks away. I hung up the phone and felt sorry for myself. Did I really have to wait another two weeks? Ugh!

A few minutes later they called back, and said they had been able to swap the machine out with another vet's machine, and they could come out that day! What a relief! After that, I felt shaky and even more nervous for the appointment.

When the vet called to say he was on his way, I rushed over to the barn, brushed her off, and then waited. He first sedated her, and since she was in lala land and he had the ultrasound machine, he checked her ovaries. They are both 100% normal; the one on the right has a huge follicle (so she is in heat right now) and I am pretty sure that we can put that entire thing to rest. Then he clipped her along her spine (bummer) and his assistant cleaned her off really well with alcohol pads so that no dirt got into the ultrasound probe.


getting clipped

They applied gel and then started the ultrasound. As he went along the spine I could see the tissue between the spinus processes: normal, normal, normal, not normal.....ahhh crap, she wasn't healed. He confirmed that he could see the injury, but from the report from Tuft's, it seemed to have healed significantly. It had originally spanned across three vertebra, and now barely stretched along one. So that is great news. However, she will need more time off before I can ride. She is allowed to start lunging, 5 minutes a day and working up from there. She cannot be silly or kick out on the lunge line, and he advised using a Pessoa system or side reins. If she is too hot or crazy, I can give her Ace.

I took her out today on the lunge line, even though I didn't have a Pessoa system, and had her trot around. I didn't give her any Ace because she seemed very chill. She was awesome, and behaved perfectly. She stretched down and trotted out nicely, not getting riled up in the least.

So I am happy she's progressing, but sad that we still have a long time ahead of us before I can ride.

Appropriately, I got the reimbursement cheque back from the insurance today. They covered $3700 of the bill, so yes, insurance is totally worth it. :)

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

horsey insurance - the post you guys have all been asking for!

Many people have asked me to share some details on my experience with insuring Lucy. This is all what I have personally learned, and I am not an insurance professional. Feel free to read through this and take into consideration what I suggest, but always talk to an insurance professional/agent before purchasing a policy.

If you are thinking of buying insurance, or trying to decide if you need it, let me ask you two simple questions:

1. If your horse required colic surgery to survive, could you afford $10,000 out of pocket to provide that for the horse?
2. If you could not, would you be ok putting that horse down and not receiving any financial reimbursement to help replace the horse?

If your answer to either of these questions is "no", I highly recommend looking into insurance. As horse owners, we never WANT our animals to be hurt, but I can tell you I sleep very well at night knowing that if Lucy needed some crazy expensive surgery tomorrow, I would never have to think twice before shipping her up to Tuft's and letting them save her. It was also really awesome when the vet was out for the third time recently, trying to pinpoint her mystery lameness, and he turned to me and said "is she insured?" and I said "yes", and he said, "well what are we waiting for? let's get her a bone scan". Less than a week later, we had a solid diagnosis and a great prognosis.

Most insurance companies offer a few different types of policies, and I will do my best to explain them in layman's terms, and hopefully this will help those of you who are considering insurance for your horse.

The two main policies are Mortality (M) and Major Medical (MM). If you want to purchase a MM policy, you are going to need to purchase a M policy also. However, if you only want to purchase a Mortality policy, you do not need to purchase Major Medical. Keep in mind that if you only have Mortality coverage and your horse colics, some companies require that colic surgery be attempted on the animal to try and save them. If you do not attempt to save the animal with surgery, the company will not pay out on the Mortality claim. This prevents people from opting to put the horse down prematurely in order to get the insurance pay out.

MM will cover costs associated with veterinary care, including diagnostics, exams, hospital stays, and medications. They will not pay for a vet's farm call fee, and there are some treatments like stem cell injections, IRAP, etc that most companies will not pay for.

M policies help you recover from the loss of a horse in that you will be given a cheque for the monetary worth of an animal after it has passed away. If Mortality is a huge issue for you, check the fine print of your policy - is it an "agreed value" policy or not? Agreed value means that if you insure the horse for $5000, you will get $5000 if the horse dies. If it is not an agreed value policy, the insurance may question the true value of the horse and require you to provide proof of training/competition results to justify the value. Mortality premium costs are calculated according to what the horse is insured for.

There are also colic rider policies you can purchase that will provide a bit of extra coverage for instances of colic.

When I first bought Lucy four years ago, I paid less than $1000 for her. I had her insured within a week for $5000, because that is the lowest policy I could purchase. I personally don't care about Mortality payouts; my major concern was and still is being able to provide the best veterinary care for Lucy. My insurance company at the time, Great American, calculated the premium for the insurance policy based on the value of the horse being insured. I chose to purchase insurance from Great American because they allowed $10,000 of Major Medical coverage for my horse even though she was only insured for $5000. Be careful when shopping for "cheap" policies. Generally the cheaper policies only provide as much MM coverage as Mortality, so with Lucy valued at $5000, some insurance companies would have only provided $5000 of MM. This would have only paid for about half of a colic surgery if she had needed one - NOT GOOD!

I used Great American for three years, until this past year, when they decided they would no longer provide Major Medical policies on horses valued under $15000. I decided to shop around for a different company, and chose American Equine Insurance. I chose them because they would give me $10,000 of MM coverage even if my horse was insured for only $5000 under her Mortality policy. I could have even bought a $15000 MM policy if I had wanted to. They also have NO co-pay for diagnostics, which is HUGE for me. This entire saga with the mystery lameness came out to about $4000, give or take a few dollars. I should be getting all of it, minus the farm call fees and my $300 deductible, back from the insurance company (if my vet ever completes his report and sends it to them!!!).

On that note, one very important thing to realize is that the vet hospital doesn't care if you have your horse insured or not. Unlike human insurance, the hospital will require that you pay the entire bill before you get your horse back. I had to do that with Tuft's and yeah, it sucked to write a cheque for 75% of the projected bill when I dropped her off (just shy of $2500), and then write another $800 cheque when I picked her up. Um, ouch! But they don't want to wait for you to process paperwork with your insurance company so unless you work out other arrangements like care credit or scheduled payments, expect to be writing a fat cheque to the hospital or vet, regardless if you intend to claim it against the insurance policy.

As for companies, the ones I see most frequently recommended are Great American (for horses valued at $15k or over only), Hallmark, Markel, and American Equine. When shopping, here are the things you should be most concerned about:

Mortality
-is this policy an Agreed Value policy?
-does the policy require you to do "reasonable treatments" for your horse in order to get reimbursed if the horse dies? for instance, if the horse is colicking and you decide to euthanize, will the insurance pay out even if you don't attempt to save the horse with colic surgery?
Major Medical
-does this policy's value only go as high as the Mortality policy, or is it good for $10k? $15k?
-what is the deductible that you have to pay before the insurance starts covering things?
-is there a co-pay for diagnostics? some companies require a 20 or 30% co-pay for diagnostics. when you're talking about a $60 x-ray, that's not a big deal, but when you're talking about a $2500 bone scan, that's a lot of money!
-if the horse is diagnosed with some kind of a long-term issue, such as Cushings, that requires medication for the rest of its life, what type of coverage will your MM provide?
-if you make a claim on your policy, will the company then exclude that going forward? for instance, if your horse has a RF lameness and the vet determines that the horse has a small bone chip, and then the insurance company pays for the chip removal surgery and the horse recovers fully, is that RF then an exclusion on your policy? if yes, for how long? just a year, two years, or for the rest of your horse's life?

I absolutely 100% recommend going through an AGENT, not directly through the COMPANY. An Agent will act as your guide through the insurance process. A lot of times, they can get you a better rate than going directly through the company. They will help you decide which type of insurance to get, how much insurance you need, and which company to choose. Someone with a $100k show hunter may benefit from using a different company than someone with a $20k Novice level eventer. When shopping, ask questions -- lots of them!! Most agents work with a few different companies so when you're ready to call for info, make out a spreadsheet that you can fill in with values as the agent tells you about various options. A good spreadsheet might look like this:

Horse's name:
Insured value:

Agent's name:
Agent's contact info:

                                               Company 1          Company 2          Company 3

MM Premium
M Premium
MM Deductible
Diagnostics Co-pay
Mortality: Agreed Value?

So that is Major Medical and Mortality. Other types of policies are loss of use, which would reimburse you if your level 4 jumper were to pull a suspensory and never be able to jump again. That type of policy is VERY expensive because horses are stupid and they hurt themselves all the time. Beyond that, there are liability policies, farm policies, etc.

Hopefully this was helpful. Insurance can be scary, but if you are smart about the purchasing process, you will save yourself a lot of stress and money if your horse needs medical attention that you couldn't otherwise afford.

Friday, February 3, 2012

LOL Cats, a run down the road, and liability insurance 101

First,


Ok, now to the nitty gritty:

What is it with loose horses and roads?

They are not friends.

They do not play well together.

fight! fight! fight!
 They are both unpredictable, like two chemicals that may explode when put together in one test tube.

similar to how I bet your head just exploded of cuteness.
 I have had several bad falls on trails where the horse (both Lucy and the horse I was riding before I bought her) left me and ran home along the road. My old horse, Caesar, lived in a super quiet neighbourhood and though a horse running down the road is never a good thing, I didn't completley lose my marbles because very rarely was there ever a car that came down that road.

This past Spring, Lucy and I parted ways on a trail ride, and she was so spooked that she galloped down the middle of the road all the way back to the barn. As I hobbled as fast as I could after her, someone picked me up and was like, "um, was that your horse galloping down the road?". The person offered to drive me back to the barn. On the drive back, people were literally coming out of their houses and lining the road with confused expressions, like a scene right out of Independence Day when the alien space ship is landing.


Sadly, it was Lauren's turn yesterday and due to a freak tack failure, Lucy was able to get loose and have a little trip down the main road the the barn is off of. The billets on Lauren's saddle broke mid-ride and caused the saddle to shift around Lucy's side, which set her off, causing Lauren to bail (she reports that the footing in the outdoor is very cushy, which I am sure will come in handy for me sooner or later). The worst part is that it's not like the leather part of the billets broke; the nails/tacks holding the top of the billets onto the body of the saddle popped out and that's how the billets broke away. Honestly, now, has anyone ever checked the tippy top of their saddle's billet straps to make sure they're not about to fall out? I sure haven't.

Lucy booked it up the driveway of the farm and was loose on the main road the the barn is off of. The saddle fell off about 1/2 way up the driveway. It's a fairly busy road with a 35mph speed limit and the barn's driveway is almost hidden, so she could have been easily hit coming out of it.

A stranger drove down the driveway, spotted Lauren, and asked, "Is that your horse running up and down the road?" Then the kind stranger drove Lauren up to the road to try and find the horse.

According to Lauren, Lucy trotted up and down the road, much less upset now that the saddle was off, and seemed to be trying to figure out where she was and how she could get back to the barn.

She probably knew she was in hot water!


By this time, traffic was stopped thanks to three police officers.

BAD HORSE!
Then Lucy got her bearings and saw the indoor, and ran over to it (and out of the road, thank God).

Now, the good news is that Lucy did NOT get hit by a car, damage any property, mow down any grandmas, or cause any permanent PTSD to anyone. It also really sounded like Lucy got her brains back as soon as the saddle was out of the picture, and she did not run up and down the street like a complete maniac.

The bad news is that Lauren's poor saddle is not a very happy camper and the whole thing was a bit traumatic for everyone :( I felt really bad that this happened, and even worse that I was stuck at work and couldn't do anything to help!

It soon struck me that I could have very easily had a BIG ASS lawsuit on my hands if she had been hit by a car, damaged property, or hurt someone. I spent much of last night researching liability insurance policies that would cover me if this were to ever happen again with not as good of an ending. For yearly $1,000,000 policies for one horse, I was quoted $150 by one company, $500 by another, and then someone said, "You should just get a USEF membership for $35. It includes $1M of liability coverage."

I was like,


I did a lot of frantic googling around and compared a few policies.

$35 later, I am a member (non-competing...for now) of USEF and I already have a copy of my shiny new $1,000,000 liability insurance policy saved on my computer. Contrary to popular belief, this policy covers you at USEF-sanctioned shows AND at home (or wherever you go). It covers property damage, bodily injury, etc. There are exclusions such as if you are teaching a lesson on the horse, so it won't work for everyone, but if you don't currently have liability insurance, I highly recommend you look into it!