Insurance Reviews

The American Kennel Club (AKC), one of the earliest pet insurance providers, has been providing pet insurance plans since the 1880’s. Because of their experience, they have understood the high costs of modern veterinary treatments, surgery and prescriptions, and the financial burden these costs create when you need to provide the very best care for your dog.

You can have your dog enrolled in one of their packages, so long as the dog is not nine years old and below. Their policies are available to US residents for dogs eight weeks and older, and cats ten weeks and older. Another point to ponder is that AKC Pet Insurance will only cover cats and dogs. You can’t avail of the AKC for any other type of pet. On a positive note, they accepts any breed of cats and dogs, even the mixed breeds. You do not need to have them registered as well. Coverage when it comes to accidents, injuries as well as preventive procedures commences as soon as your plan is approved. On the other hand, you would have to wait for thirty more days for the illness coverage to be effective.

The AKC provides six pet insurance packages, namely 60-Day Trial, Accident Plus, Essential, Essential Plus, Wellness and Wellness Plus. These packages cover the basics such as surgery, hospitalization, diagnostic and laboratory tests, prescriptions, X-Rays, CT scans, MRIs, and cancer. The AKC Pet Healthcare wellness plans, on the other hand, covers preventive treatments that includes vaccinations and boosters, an annual check-up, elective spay/neuter, heartworm testing, heartworm prevention, flea and tick control, parasite control, annual dental cleaning and other preventive measures. If you look at the coverage of all these packages, you would find out that they cover almost the same things. The difference lies in the coverage amount that they call the maximum per policy term. If you avail the trial package, your pet will only be covered for $1,400. And, the wellness plans will bump up the maximum per policy term significantly to $13,000.

Their policies contain certain restrictions on coverage – no insurance policy will be able to cover everything, so they hope you will read your terms and conditions closely. Generally, the AKC Pet Healthcare Plan does not cover some veterinary treatment, such as any pre-existing, congenital illness or hereditary condition. Please check the Policy Terms and Conditions for full details to see list of specific diseases/illnesses that are always excluded.

One of the advantages that you will get when you avail of a pet insurance package from American Kennel Club is that all licensed veterinarians are covered under the plan, unlike other pet insurance companies that offers a limited list of veterinarians and forcing you to switch in the process. You do not need to have a list of veterinary at hand in case an emergency crops up. So if changing your favorite veterinarian is not your cup of coffee, but you would still want an insurance package that would cover your pet in a myriad of ways, the AKC is worth checking out.