In the following points I shall give you five errors to avoid when choosing your pet's health insurance policy.

These mistakes if not noticed could end up costing you a significant amount of money, or worse still, finding your pet is not covered by the insurance policy.

And of course, you will only discover this when you really need it.

So onto the mistakes

1.Ensure that you are aware of any excess that the policy may require. The excess is the amount of cash you will have to pay out before the insurance company picks up the rest of the bill. For example, if the course of treatment costs $600 and the excess for the policy is $100 then after you pay the first $100 the insurance company will pay the remainder of $500.

2.Ensure that you are aware of any exclusions that the policy may insist on. Put simply, if your pet is of a breed that generally suffers from a specific condition then that condition may well be excluded from your policy. Make sure that you read the small print to check this point.
If necessary, disregard this provider and continue your search for a more relevant policy.

3.Most pet insurance policies will not cover your pet for any existing conditions. If your pet has already seen a vet for an illness and has been cured, any re-occurrence of that illness, or associated illnesses, will not be covered by the insurance policy.
If you want a policy to cover the existing conditions then you are in for hard search as most insurance companies will simply not cover pre-existing conditions.

4.Some policies will only pay out over a predefined time frame. So for example, if the illness and treatment continues for eight weeks some policies will only cover payment for the first four weeks of treatment. The amount of time covered will vary between insurance companies so again check the small print for any variation.

5.As well as being limited by time some pet insurance policies will be limited by the amount of funds that will be released for any one particular claim. The amount paid by the insurance company will be capped by their predefined limit. Once the amount in the pot is used up then it will be up to the owner to make up any shortfall.

I hope the points above will help you in your selection of pet insurance policy. As you can see it will be well worth your while going over the small print of every policy you evaluate.