Insure or self insure - please help

Hi there I'm new to the forum and will try to contribute where I can but would seriously appreciate anyone's advice or personal experiences regarding insurance.

So the question in short is when is best to insure and when is best to self insure? Especially if you have 5 bunnies.

Here's the situation: for more than fives years I had four (rescue) bunnies and only ever claimed twice on my petplan insurance and probably only got back, after the excesses, £150 ish. From the beginning, two buns had dental problems and over the years, we spent probably close to a couple of thousand pounds on dentals and associated abscess removals etc which unfortunately were excluded (anything on the head had been excluded as soon as I had mentioned the rabbit had had a dental prior to insuring it). So on top of the insurance which was £250-350 per year we paid for the check-ups, vaccinations and then the vet bills for the dental work. So definitely in this case with hindsight the insurance wasn't worth it.

With only one original bunny left we now have more time and more space and have we decided to offer a couple more rescue bunnies a home. Initially we decided to insure, just because we always had done and liked the security of knowing if something serious happened we'd be ok and not have any difficult decisions to make.

However, we now have five bunnies: the one senior bunny remaining with bad dental issues and a weepy eye but which are conditions still excluded from the policy, three middle aged- 3-4yr olds, which have already had dental burrs under GA for maintenance but which are not covered but the insurance, the other is young and so far healthy. The total insurance works out at around £43 per month and all have at least £50 excesses on their policies.

We're experienced with cost of dentals, abscesses etc which haven't been covered but we're not that familiar with other costly bunny conditions. We want to provide for all our bunnies and before we go too far down the road with paying the premiums wonder whether it might be more cost effective to self-insure and put the money each month in account (we are very careful and would do this)? You see with 5 bunnies we thought there might be a better chance of spreading the risk and self insuring might be the better option. Then you question yourself and think is it worth insuring some and not all i.e. the younger healthier one?

Any opinions or advice would be a great help.

Jack

There have been so many threads about insurance - it's a really difficult decision. I think the latest thread is from littlemunchies(?) so it might be worth reading the posts on that thread.

There really isn't any such thing as "self insurance" unless you have £2k per bunny per year remaining of their life in a savings account. Because they all live with you there is a risk that they will all get sick at the same time.

If a rabbit has lots of pre-existing conditions then I wouldn't bother insuring because most new illnesses will be linked in some way to a previous illness. You need to keep a lot of money saved away somewhere though, just in case.

For healthy rabbits I would always insure (unless you are rich).

I would ALWYS insure - just this month we have had two buns have CT scans on their heads, which have been invaluable in diagnostics and treatment - £400 per bun - and thats before we embark any further on the treatment! Add to that another bun has had a another course of accupuncture, and i have a feeling that we are heading towards a dental with another (fortunately he developed dentals after the insurance was in place).

if you have 5 buns and managed to get them insured for say £10 a month then thats £50 a month.

If you put £50 a month into a savings account you'd only have £600 after a year, the equivalent of £120 per bun, which is nothing with vets bills being what they are.

Me personally - i'd insure :wave:

It's also not always about 'difficult' decisions - sometimes getting to the diagnosis is costly in itself and the treatment may not be that expensive and the rabbit lives on quite happily.

For example, Muppet was diagnosed with spondylosis in January 2009 - but it took about a fortnight to eliminate stomach/teeth problems etc etc. Roughly speaking he cost me about £400 in that fortnight (dental, x-rays, a couple of emergency vets appointments). The actual treatment - steroids injection - wasnt that expensive. He also had acupuncture on top of all that (eight or nine treatments at £30 each) but I guess you could consider those 'optional'.

He wasnt insured but I was luckily in a position where paying out £400 unexpectedly was inconvenient but not disastrous.

This January for a entirely unrelated different and unexpected problem he cost me £600.

In hindsight insurance would have been worth it - you just cant predict those things unfortunately! I think you have to base your decision on your income and whether you can take 'sudden hits'.