I have no insurance for my pigs (too many and most with long term med problems).
However, I would like to comment if I may.
I may not have submitted a pet insurance claim - but I have had to submit a building and contents insurance claim when my whole house was flooded and needed substantial building work to re-instate it. The cost to me personally was a lot of time and money having to do it myself and went on for 2 years! So even pursuing a pet insurance claim can "cost" the owner a lot of time and money getting it submitted correctly and chasing reimbursement.
I could have employed a loss assessor to handle the claim for me at a % fee of the claim value (5%) - i.e. in my case approx £7500.
Pet insurance has not reached the giddy heights of needing to employ loss assessors on behalf of the owner yet (thankfully) so putting that into perspective, (and on the basis that a pet insurance claim can be anything from £250 up to £10,000), a pet owner would pay a loss assessor anything from £3.30 to £500 for administration of a claim. That puts the £7.50 into perspective.
In the first scenario quoted, the vets are having to reclaim their fees direct from the insurance. This takes time, affects cash-flow and has implications for loss of interest compared to if the money had already been paid by the owner. The vets are therefore providing a service to the owner and saving them having to pay the vets first and reclaim the cost themselves.
In the second scenario, on a commercial level, the vets are still providing a service to the owner by helping them with the information required to submit their claim and recover the vet fees already paid (which still costs the vets time and money in terms of administration/staff etc). However the bottom line is the vets have already been paid by the owner, This is more about "Customer Service" "Value Added" and "Retention of long-term business". This is a "Business Decision" for the owners of the practice to be taken in context with competition, local situation etc
I do not think it unreasonable to charge a MINIMAL Administrative fee for Scenario 2 -
BUT the [you]difference[/you] in fees between scenario 1 and scenario 2 should reflect the amount of time and effort it costs the pet owner. and the vets...
In scenario 1 the vets haven;'t been paid and the owner has minimal work to do
In scenario 2 the vets have already been paid at the cost to the owner who then has a lot of work to do.
£7.50 fixed fee to help fill in insurance forms for owner to reclaim is a very reasonable sum - (GP's have been charging a minimum of £10 for years).
I'm assuming that the pet owners should be able to recover the cost of this fee from their insurance company - (this has been the case in human health insurance)
........so perhaps in order to "sell" this change - the vets need to investigate whether this is possible and emphasise it in their sales and marketing to "sweeten the pill"?
Hope these comments help
x
