For the past four months, I have tried to cover the basics of pet insurance by writing about maximums, deductibles, coinsurance percentages, and so forth. For this week, I thought I might show you how to apply some of that information, and I decided to do it in a new format - a video blog post.

In my book, Your Guide To Understanding Pet Health Insurance, there is a chapter entitled "Sample Claims and Reimbursements." I submitted several wellness claims, and also claims for accidents or illnesses, to all the pet insurance companies. All but one was gracious enough to respond and detail for me and the readers of the book exactly how they would reimburse those claims. I found out some things by submitting those claims that I didn't know about just from visiting and browsing their websites.

Today, we are going to look at one of those claims and how four companies would reimburse the pet owner. Two companies reimburse according to whatever the veterinarian charges; one reimburses according to what is considered usual and customary; and one reimburses according to a benefit schedule.

So, let's get to the video, and please let me know if you like this format. If so, I'll try to do more of it in the future.

(Note to readers who receive this post as an e-mail: Please click the link at the top of the page to view the embedded video on our site.)

Dr. Doug Kenney

_{Pic of the day: sleepy dog by Valerie Reneé}