Ongoing medication- to claim or not to claim?

judpudding

Hi All,

My itchy dog requires Apoquel to stop his allergies. It is a miracle drug and has been really great for him.

It costs around £67 per month for 30 tablets.

Have never claimed insurance before and want to know if it's worth it. We pay around £36 per month for Direct Line Advanced Pet Insurance. The excess is £80. If I claim, do you think the premium will rocket? I can see him being on these tablets for a very long time/potential lifetime.

Any advice would be great?

Thank you.

GwylimT

Is it a lifetime policy?

Personally I have no experience of directline so I don't know what they tend to be like regarding premiums.

judpudding

Yeah, lifetime policy. Covers individual conditions up to £8000

sheramber

Without insurance claim you pay per annum 12x£67 = £804 for the treatment plus
premium 12x 36 = £ 432
total £1236

With insurance claim you pay premiums £432 + £80 excess = £512

so DL would need to increase premiums by the difference of 1236 and 512 - 724 /12 = £60.34 per month before you were worse off.

I have no knowledge of how DL calculate their premiums or what the increase would actually be.

teddysmum

Are the drug costs based on prices from your vet , as online prices are much lower ?


A friend halved the cost of her dog's heart medication, by using an online pharmacy. (I use Animed Direct)

gettingready

Apoquel can not be purchased online anywhere as there is shortage everywhere. It is only available via vets and not all vets have it in stock.

Zara is on 16mg, 1.5 tablet a day and that is about £117.00 per month via my vets.

I always claim, Zara is with Argos Platinum but she hes life time cover not as yours per condition only. As you say:

Yeah, lifetime policy. Covers individual conditions up to £8000

Zara's insurance renews every year for 7k and that can be used for any condition, hers is not limited per condition as yours.

I have no experience with your insurer so can not advice re premium hikes but Apoquel is so expensive.

In my case - i pay £140.00 per month in insurance premiums for Zara, Apoquel is 117 per month BUT she also takes Onsior and Gabapentin and just the cost of her tablets is more than the insurance premiums plus anything else that goes wrong is covered. I always claim xx

krlyr

Premium increases really can depend. Some insurers will consider previous claims when recalculating, but not all.

As an example, I've got two dogs, both down on paper as the same age (one only had an estimated age, so we gave them both the same DOB for ease!), similar breeds, and therefore both similar costs to insure. I've always kept them with the same insurers, up until recently, and always found the premium increases to be pretty much the same each year.

However, one of them has an ongoing condition, for which I've claimed at least a couple of thousand over the past few years (blood tests and daily medication), plus more claims on a one-off joint problem. The other hasn't a single claim to his name - other than a one-off tummy bug and his annual checkup, he hasn't been to the vet for anything in the 6.5 years I've had him. So it shows how unpredictable the premiums can be, you'd expect the one with claims' premiums to have rocketed way past the other, instead of remaining pretty much the same.

judpudding

Thanks for the responses all. I think for now I will pay the monthly cost for the meds and hope the vets can get to the root cause of the allergy which could mean he won't be on them for life