We always want to give our animals the best health care they can get. But when things are so expensive such as hospitalization, medication and treatment how can we do that? The cost of all this stuff would be around $3000. Pets are not just animals, to most they are family. So, pet insurance allows you as the pet owner to have better options for your pets health needs.

Sweden has the highest percentage of pet owners who get their pets insurance. Sweden has a whopping 49%, Canada has 19%, but The United States only has 3%. Here is an overview of the good and bad when getting pet insurance. This will help you to make the best decision for your furry friend.

The Good

The major concept of getting a pet insurance policy is so just in case something would happen where you couldn’t come up with a huge amount of money for an accident or a medical emergency for you furry friend they would be provided for already.

The cost of any Vet visit or supplies is going up in rate very fast. There are already advanced medications that veterinarians can use to get your pet better if he is sick. If you get the best pet insurance plan they can also include things such as spay, neuter, vaccinations and flea medication for coverage.

Pet Insurances do not only cover medical needs. They can also cover things such as poster, financial assistance, posters, and advertising for pet owners who have had their pet stolen. Insurance companies can even help you to get a new pet.

The Bad

Pet insurance varies a lot in price. Some are very expensive while others have lower plans. It all depends on what kind of coverage you need to get for your pet. You have to decide what kind of coverage you want so you can get the right insurance for pet that you need.

Pet insurance companies will take into consideration lots of things about your animal so some may be harder to get a plan for then others. For example if you have a dog that has prior sicknesses or is old then you may have problems getting a good insurance plan. Most of the pet insurance companies will not pay the fees up front for you, in most cases you will have to pay the fees first and then your insurance company will send you the money back later.

Ashley Seager’s expensive NatWest policy failed to pay out, so he complained to the ombudsman – only for the label of quality to be dismissed as ‘meaningless’

NatWest’s travel insurance was one of the main reasons that I, like so many other of the bank’s customers, have an Advantage Private account. For an annual fee of £240 it says it is “packed with exclusive features”, chief among them its five-star Defaqto-rated annual worldwide travel insurance, which the bank claims is worth £160 alone.

Last year, I put it to the test. I took my family to Canada on holiday – only to be stranded by the collapse of Zoom Airlines. But instead of the insurance kicking in and returning us home, NatWest refused to pay out. To my surprise – and cost – it said the insurance did not cover the failure of a scheduled airline.

Furious, I took my case to the Financial Ombudsman. Surely, I argued, “five-star” had to mean that it was a fully comprehensive policy that would cover me in most eventualities – such as, in my case, a scheduled airline going bust. After all, NatWest proudly displays its five-star rating prominently over its literature for the Advantage Private account.

A year later, I have finally had my complaint judged by the ombudsman. He has found in favour of NatWest, and I won’t be getting any compensation. But the reason why I’ve been rejected makes for interesting reading. The ombudsman, it appears, thinks that the five-star ratings that financial companies use to promote their products are entirely meaningless.

“I do not consider that there is any common agreement as to what the phrase means. In my judgment the term “five-star” has no specific meaning and amounts to nothing more than “puff”,” wrote ombudsman Reidy Flynn in her judgment.

I contacted the ombudsman’s office to discuss the lack of logic, but it declined to comment. Its basic judgment is that the Natwest Advantage Private bundled account with its five-star travel insurance was not obliged, in any way, to cover for the failure of an airline, or any other transportation company. I should have read the small print, no matter how small.

My complaint had made the following points: that it was unreasonable that a five-star policy did not cover airline failure – any normal person would expect to have such a thing covered if they were travelling abroad; that it was unreasonable that such an exclusion would not be on the list of “significant exclusions” at the front of the policy; and that it was unreasonable that it should be buried in the small print.

I had tried to find out, prior to travelling, whether this point was covered but could not get through to NatWest on the phone, or find the relevant documents on its website. I could not find the documents at home, either, although NatWest insists they were sent. So I relied on the “five-star” rating, thinking it sounded good.

I have since learned that across the insurance industry not many policies cover airline failure. But the Post Office does, and that’s not an obscure little company. It would have cost £1-1.50 per person for NatWest to cover their policy holders for a year against airline failure. Was it reasonable to expect them to have done so for its premium account customers? You might think so, but NatWest did not, nor did the ombudsman.

Defaqto was bemused by the ombudsman’s comments. “I am surprised it has couched it in those terms,” said its head of research, Brian Brown. “Our ratings are independent but do not purport to offer any kind of legal guarantee of what a product may contain. People should check the details.”

He denied that banks and insurers pay a fee to Defaqto to use their ratings, implying the company was biased towards issuing “five-star” ratings. He added that the company only issued five-star ratings on 10-12% of products and no comnpany pays to appear in its analysis. The bulk of its revenue comes from a business-to-business database it compiles and sells to banks and insurers.

Perhaps, though, if the ombudsman service thinks five-star ratings are meaningless and “puff”, it, or another authority, should move to ban them? That’s the only conclusion a reasonable person could reach.