Colic and insurance exclusions – why bother insuring then?

J

Jingleballs

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I’m in the process of claiming with my insurer (NFU) for a minor cut to my horses leg which has needed more treatment than I’d originally expected and therefore I figured I’m as well making use of my £50 a month policy and actually claiming on it since my excess is only £145 but my bill is looking to be around £350.

2 years ago, my horse suffered from colic – he had a pelvic infracture which required 4 vet visit’s, various treatments and from memory the bill amounted to something like £500 with emergency call out costs etc. I claimed this through my insurer with no issue.

Looking at my new policy it seems now that this condition is now excluded from the policy from now on – I though that because my horse had been colic free for 2 years this exclusion could be lifted but I was advised that although this used to be the case they no longer offer. So because I declared and claimed on a £500 vet bill for minor colic, should my horse need colic surgery 5 or 10 years down the line and I am still with this insurer this would not be covered but I’m still left paying my £50 a month.

Apparently one positive change to their policy is that the leg which is currently injured would only be excluded for future conditions which arise as a direct result of the current problem whereas previously they were more inclined to apply a wider exclusion.

It just makes me wonder though why we bother to fork out these increasing premiums ever month when less and less is being covered!

I just renewed my policy with them a week ago and am seriously contemplating asking them to put a stop to the claim and cancelling my policy and just getting myself 3rd party insurance and putting money into a pot every month to save for any vet’s fee’s – not ideal if my horse was to suddenly need major surgery but at the same time 0% credit card’s are always available as an alternative!
 
Precicely why ours are no longer insured.
For my mare after a non claim gassy colic (she barged some elec fence and pigged on some old long grass for abotu 2 hrs!) and a £200 claim to treat a sarcoid she now has colic and skin excluded. OH mare has no legs or feet left after a couple of sets of dodgy shoes resulted in a medial lateral imbalance. With an increasing premium (£1400 for two healthy mares, no lou and low insurance values) we decided it just wasn't worth it as most expensive things we might need to claim on were excluded!

Saving account and BHS gold have us sorted now! It is a risk, but we decided that we would be better without the insurance.
 
It is looking more and more like the better option!

I've emailed another insurer AMTrust who have stated that they would not exclude colic from their cover since the horse had not suffered from it for 2 years.

They are about £15 more expensive that what I currently pay though and I do wonder what other exclusions may be hidden there in the policy wording.

I understand they need to protect themselves but it does often feel like they are more interested in taking your money that offering you any real level of cover!
 
I believe insurance to be one big con, I'm with bhs gold membership for 3rd party cover and that's it. Put your £50 back in a saving account montly and you will prob be better off
 
Insurance is all about assessing the risk. Therefore, they exclude conditions your horse has had as it's likely that it may reoccur or cause another problem.

However, they shouldn't permanently exclude colic. The company I worked for would if the horse had surgery that exceeded £5k and i'm guessing that's because they deemed it major and therefore may have further complications down the line. But for colic 2 years ago that didn't cost much then that's bizarre. Aren't NFU having lots of funny moments currently though? I'd try somewhere else.

Self-insuring is fine as long as you know you could cover treatment if needed. If you cancelled today and tomorrow your horse has an accident would you be able to cope financially?
 
I get a bit defensive...my sister is always going on about how insurance is a con. I take it personally as insurance is my career! End of the day, pet insurance isn't compulsory so if you're not happy with it you can do something about it
 
I do the 3rd party thing with both mine as well as there wouldn't be much of their poor old bodies covered for vet fees and I don't like chucking money at the insurance companies for the sake of it.

Incidentally, if your horse had a colic that you didn't claim for (say it was a mild spasmodic which only required one vet visit) and, two years down the line he required surgery for an impaction, it still wouldn't be covered, even though you hadn't actually made a prior claim for colic. The fact that he had had colic at some dim and distant point in the past would nullify any future cliam and your premiums would have gone straight down the proverbial.
 
Incidentally, if your horse had a colic that you didn't claim for (say it was a mild spasmodic which only required one vet visit) and, two years down the line he required surgery for an impaction, it still wouldn't be covered, even though you hadn't actually made a prior claim for colic. The fact that he had had colic at some dim and distant point in the past would nullify any future cliam and your premiums would have gone straight down the proverbial.[/QUOTE]

Not necessarily. Depends on the company. Where I worked and currently do, the Underwriters would look at it and make a decison. If the horse had the mild colic and had been colic free for the period inbetween that and the next bout then they wouldn't exclude and would pay. The Underwriters would look at it like "well...colic, we would have excluded but would remove after a year/2 years if there were no further incidences. Therefore, if we'd known about the colic, the exclusion would've been removed by now so its covered"
 
Insurance is always expensive until you come to claim. Colic although serious and expensive if they need surgery is only one illness. I'm in for £1000 already with Ringbone, so before you cancel just remember all treatment now is expensive these days even if colic is excluded.
 
I also think as well if your insured the vets will take advantage, everytime a vet comes out to me and 1st question asked is " are you insured?" I always say " why should that matter?" treatment should be the same surely? But in plenty off cases iv seen I'm not so sure it is.
 
I've got my money's worth out of it this year.
Yearling colt £3K worth of surgery and aftercare from a single £200 premium. Worth it - oh yes, full recovery and he is a potential stallion candidate.
His poor Mum has two claims ongoing, one for ringbone and hock arthritis and another for her SDFT injury. Total for the two is already well over the £2K mark and the arthritis one alone is likely to be around £2.5k by the time we've finished. SDFT is already almost £1k as she had complications from pressure sores caused by the Robert Jones bandage and ended up in horpsital for a week on high dose IV antibiotics.
 
It's Hardy's Tragedy of the Commons. If people claimed only when necessary and not for everything, and if vets administered sensible treatments rather than throwing Olympic-racehorse treatments (ie expensive) at 20 year old arthritic hacks, then insurance wouldn't be so expensive, so more people would use it.

But I've seen from several friends' experiences that the system gets abused because the vets offer expensive treatments which have no guarantee of working and which are most likely not to work, but the vet tells the distraught owner that "it's worth trying because the horse is insured."

So the owner tries, the horse dies anyway as it was always going to, just maybe a few days later and with a few extra treatments or surgeries or trips to vets or hospitalisations. The insurance company pay out £kks and then put everyone's premiums up. The only winner is the vet.

And it's owners too. Owners are too quick to take their horses for full bloods, full workups, full scans, when things go wrong. Gone are the days of rest, it, turn it out, boxrest, wait and see. "Wait and see" doesn't exist in today's world. And it's also these needless callouts of vets with subsequent unnecessary claims on insurance premiums that again put the premiums up for everyone else. And cause the insurance companies to put tighter and tighter restrictions on exclusions on everyone's premiums, lifelong exclusions in some cases.

On the bright side, the massive amounts of money now involved in financing horse treatments means that ever-new and more in-depth horse treatments become available. Where some treatments would only have been available to racing Sheikhs and Olympic champions, now everyone has access to the same treatments, via insurance, for their woolly native ponies and riding club horses.

We can't have it both ways.
 
Equine vets aren't too bad. Small animal vets are the worst for unnecessary treatments and sometimes made up! We had a particular group of vets that would put all sorts on the invoices. Plus we wouldn't pay for them to fill out the claim form so they started to charge a "nurse consult" to cover it up. Insurance companies do clock on to these people! Assessors are quite good at picking out things that don't seem right.

Vets shouldn't treat horse's differently if they are insured or not but maybe they are just thinking of cheaper or alternative methods they could use if the client is not insured. At the end of the day, if they treat the horse with all sorts then the client says I can't pay then the vets in a spot of trouble.

I don't think people should have to not claim for everything. At the end of the day, if you have a valid claim you should use your insurance as that's what you pay for. Unfortunately I think premium increases are a result of the inflation of vet fees mixed in with the number of people that shouldn't claim at all, i.e. claim fraudulently. Plus, you can't get a no claims discount as it may discourage people from seeking treatment from the vet.
 
If I was you I would move insurers. All Kias previous exclusions other than his arthrtis have been lifted after a vet examination and proof that there have been no issues.

He had both hind limb tendons and ligaments excluded, both hocks, his front leg from the fetlock down and his warts.

Vet examined him and declared that they had no records of him being treated for anything other than the vasculitis and some bute for his hocks (I always have some sitting around incase he has a stiff day) since the injuries that caused the exclusions (more than 3 years ago for most of them, he came to me with the two warts which have never changed) and they have removed them.
 
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