Southborough Firm Offers Pet Insurance Policies
More than 1,000 in Worcester County have signed up
Things are looking up for dogs, cats and other critters owned by local dentists, optometrists and their staffs in Central Massachusetts.
The Southborough-based Massachusetts Dental Society Insurance Services, which sells insurance plans mainly to dentists' and optometrists' offices, is now offering "pet insurance" - health plans that help owners pay for chemotherapy, MRIs and other expensive procedures for their furry friends.
And it's not the only one.
The insurance carrier MDSIS is working with VPI Pet Insurance of California, which is the largest company of its kind. VPI says it has more than doubled the number of pets it insures over the past six years. It now covers 450,000 pets across the country, including more than a thousand in Worcester County alone.
Loss Spurs Action
"They were members of the family, and the expenses were over $10,000 for one and over $6,000 for the other," Gonser said.
Brian Iannessa, a spokesman for VPI, said the company sells the majority of its policies directly to customers, but employers are also increasingly interested in offering them as a benefit. Even though employees typically pay 100 percent of the plans' premiums, he said, simply offering them as options can help with recruitment, retention and morale. Home Depot, Ford and AT&T are among the major companies that now offer the plans, he said.
Gosner said his agency sees pet insurance as one of several "value-added" products, along with travel insurance, prepaid legal services and identity theft protection, that employers are increasingly eager to offer their staff. He said a few of the employers MDSIS works with are already adding the pet insurance plans to their benefits packages.
"We're just starting to get this rolling, and we've had a lot of calls on it already," he said.
Iannessa said interest in the plans is fueled by Americans' growing identification of pets as members of the family, along with advances in medical treatment available to animals, including MRIs, CT scans and ultrasounds.
"Those are sophisticated medicines, but they come with a price tag," he said.
Whether pet insurance is a smart financial bet is open to discussion. A recent Consumer Reports article argued that pet insurance premiums tend to cost far more than treating typical maladies. It suggested pet owners sock away money is a savings account instead. But Iannessa said that's not really the point. Like any insurance, he said, pet insurance is intended not as a money-saving strategy but as protection against worst-case scenarios.
"I think if you want to be really secure in knowing that you can choose the best option, not just the most affordable one, that insurances makes sense," he said.
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