I feel like crying!!!!!

J

Jomanser

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My boy has been on box rest for 10 days due to lameness in right fore. Vet just been back to assess him again and still lame. Wants him to go to surgery for lameness workup. Just phoned insurers to let them know and they inform me that his right fore is excluded from the policy, due to an injury he had 9 years ago!

I am so upset feel like crying. I want to do the best for him cause he's my boy, but really cannot afford to pay for the treatment. Bill is already over £200 and god knows how much this lameness work up is going to be!
 
awww i dont know what to say really- poor you.
that must be an awful situation to be in
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could you not try box rest for another week or so, just in case?
hope evertying works out ok
 
Exactly why I don't insure my horses. They have a minor injury which you claim for and the leg is then excluded for any subsequent claims. I'm just facing a 1600 bill for standing surgery on a fractured splint bone but to insure my horse for half of his value would cost me over 1000 a year
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All we can do is grin and bear it and havd the credit card details over!
 
Have now decided that is it for insurance. Worked out that over the years I have paid £5400 for my horses insurance and have claimed the grand total of £1300! They are all cowboys and will do whatever they can to get out of paying you.

Grrrrrrr I'm not in a happy place now!!!!!
 
I thought the exclusion would only be on anything related to the previous injury? When Murph shattered his splint bone, they excluded anything related to that injury, but if he had have gone on to break his leg/damage a tendon in a seperate incident, we could have claimed because it was unrelated to the first one.
Is this injury at all related to the first one 9 years ago? I'm sure there'll be a way around it. Ask your vet.

Good luck. x
 
No they have said any injury to the tendons or ligaments in that leg are excluded, regardless of which ones. The injury 9 years ago was just below the back of the knee (above brushing boot), the new injury the vet thinks is around his coffin joint (right at the bottom), so completely unrelated.
 
This is the exact reason that I have stopped insuring my 3. After paying thousands out in premiums, I stopped insuring them when I moved them to our own land 5 years ago. My mare did go lame earlier this year and had a full lameness work up, numerous vets visits and two joint injections. In spite of this I am still better off not insuring. I just have BHS Gold membership to cover me for public liability. Think you should cancel your insurance and put the vets bill on a credit card.
 
firstly inform your vets it will not be covered by insurance. Most vets can find some 'short cuts' and be as economical as possible if they are aware. Mine did for Dan in that they took a bit longer assessing him before starting the nerves blocks so overall took longer time but reduced amount of blocks which are more expensive. Also they limited the xrays they took to the bare minimum possible etc

I would personally argue the exclusion though as well. The exclusion should be for the site of the injury and not the entire limb. Say you want to argue the exclusion and get a letter from your vet stating the two current injuries are completly independant.

I had two exclusions removed from Dan. As a 5yo he had concussion based injuries to his feet. At first the vet was unsure of cause and he had Laminitis, DJD and concussion in addition to his feet all excluded. I got the DJD and Laminitis overturn which was just as well as it was so that I could claim for DJD
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I think it's a difficult one. I have paid loads more than I've ever claimed on insurance, but if the worst were to happen and any of them needed emergency surgery it means that there is no question that it could go ahead.

If any of them had surgical colic (touch wood), there is no time to debate whether to go for surgery or not. That's the security that insurance gives you, you don't have to make big decisions as to whether it's worth it.

You do have to watch them though - they will do there best to get out of a claim if they think they'll geyt away with it, particularly the dodgier companies. You have to be sure you know what your cover includes. It is worth challenging them though - if you can show that the conditions are unconnected they might play along.

I think that if you choose not to insure you need to be very sure about what you would and wouldn't pay for. I'm not sure I could justify spending a lot of money on my 21 year old pony, but thanks to insurance I won't have to.
 
I've come across this before with several different insurance companies. If you have one injury if you read the small print unfortunately all the ones I've seen exlude the WHOLE leg and not just the bit thatwas previously injured. When Fox cracked his pedal bone, none of the main insurers would cover the leg it happened on for anything - even if it happened higher up the leg or if he was to get kicked in the field.
 
If previous injury was high up the leg and new injury is coffin then they, in my eyes, are completely unrelated.

Get your vet to phone the insurance company directly to discuss and fight your corner for you, which company are you with out of interest?

The better ones won't exclude an entire leg normally, Petplan tried it with me once but soon narrowed it down when I rang and complained.

ETS: Insurance has been a god send for me, NFU have paid out well over £10,000 in the space of 4 years on one of mine. I have probably paid about 1500-1800 in premiums and excess
 
From personal experience I discovered that after my mare had a tendon injury in her left hind she was excluded for all tendon injuries in both hindlimbs.
IF, i could my vet to say that she had recovered and we'd had a full year with no reoccurence they would remove the exclusion from her "good" leg.
Then, IF after two years, my vet would declare that there had been no further issues with the injured leg they would remove all exclusion other than for that particular tendon in that particular area.
If I had not asked and not had the vet report she would have conitnued to be excluded.
Would be worth discussion with your insurance company (PM me if you'd like to know which insurance company this involved).
Jo

Does that make sense?
 
Hi - thanks everyone for your posts. It's a mine field isn't it????? Spoken to vet and they are going to try and find problem with minimum amount of treatment. I have stated that I am not insured and they appreciate the problem and are going to help all they can.

I will get the vet to phone and challenge it though, as seems ridiculous when the old injury was so long ago. Looking back through my records, both front legs were excluded for 2 years and then it was reduced to the one. Seems ridiculous to me, surely there should be a time limit on how long it stays on the record.

Also have discovered that Colic is excluded. Had a call out for suspected Colic last year, when the vet arrived they said it wasn't Colic but some other gastric issue (very minor). But, because the word COLIC was written on the vet reports, it has now been excluded, even though I never claimed on it!
 
The problem is that when you make a claim insurers seem to often ask for a full history from the vet. As you have found if something is just mentioned they pounce on it. When we claimed for my ponys Cushings the insurance company tried to say because she had had laminitis in the past the Cushings was a previous condition. Luckily my vet fought them, said that not every pony with laminitis was a Cushings case and they paid up. Re exclusions, another pony had a star fracture in her hind leg and the whole of the hind leg is permanently excluded. As she is 20 next year I am expecting a load more conditions at renewal and may consider ending her insurance.Hope the vet does persuade your insurance company to cover the treatment.
 
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