need advice! anyone know about insurance?

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wynnwith

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my 4 year old has just been diagnosed with mod/severe kissing spines as well as bone fragments (probably from trauma not ocd) in fetlock.

History is - went lame approx 6 months ago after being backed 2 months before that, started refusing to go on right rein, grinding to a halt, not going forward etc, i rested her to no avail, still 3/10 lame off hind. long story short - she has had a bone scan and this showed 3 areas of uptake in spine. after X-rays this confirmed kissing spine also found the bone fragments in fetlock. problem at the moment is that she is now hardly lame and not blockable (prob due to the rest now as 4 months on) so they don't know which if not both of these problems has caused the lameness..

does anyone know about insurance? because both problems were found at the same time does that mean they will put them under one claim or would the ins company separate the claims i.e. bone fragment one problem, kissing spine other problem? likelihood is that both will need operating on and if they were both under one claim it would go drastically over my 5000 limit!

does anyone have experience of these kind of problems i.e. is there a chance she can return to decent work and have a career or is it looking like she's going to be an unhappy hacker?

sorry for the long post, I'm so confused i really don't know what to do!
 
Before you do anything you should read the small print, also discuss with the vet as he should have some experience.
I think you would be very "lucky" to get two lots of 5K, but obviously you need to be careful how you approach this in order to get the best outcome, for example loading the costs on to one problem if that is the way it is going to be dealt with. We have heard of people who have been advised one way on the first application, and later the company have refused to pay out with integrity.
There is also Loss of Use to consider.
 
we had one of our mares operated on for KS last year from bone scan results and xrays she also had spavin in both hocks,left side SI and right hind PSD

our insurance(NFU) split all 4 for treatments(our vet rang them to explain the findings) so we had 4 claims running at the same time meaning we had (20k) to spend in 12 months as otherwise we would of definatly been over 5k

as you only have 12 months from the start of each finding and it is noted on your horses medical reports it is worth asking your insurance company to split the conditions as you will not be covered again after

was the bone scan covered on insurance? ours cost us around £1.5K alone for this to be done but was covered by the insurance thankfully

hope this as helped
 
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hey im sorry to hear about your horse, my lad has similar problems he has kissing spine, an ocd in one hock and a spavin in the other.
hes having two operations this summer, you have to ask the insurance to split the claims or im sure they would put them together to get out of paying! we have three seperate claims which means we can hopefully still get insurance to cover most of the cost of surgery.
the problem we have had is that because the claims are split they insist on knowing exactly why you did each test to diagnose each problem so they can categorise them, so you need to get the vets who did the original investigation into the lameness to be very thorough in explaining why they did each test :)

dont give up hope insurance is a nightmare but keep pestering them and your vets and it should come through fine :)
 
NFU were brilliant for my horses and many claims I made in a 12 month period. They are one of few insurance companies who at least pay 50% hospitalisation costs.
 
just spoke to nfu they said it will be two different claims as the kissing spines was an incidental find. She is having surgery on her fetlock tomorrow so fingers crossed that all goes ok. Then i have to get her home, rehab and look at the kissing spines! she has 5 spinal processes severely impinging and several that are close. I have to say it doesn't fill me with confidence her having all this before the age of 5!
 
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