exotic pet insurance

Chiaki

hi im looking to petition insurance companies to cover our "exotic" pets ie anything that isnt a cat/dog. this includes chinchilla, ferrets, birds, reptiles even fish. Even if you dont want/need insurance please sign your name and support those who do. Why discriminate between species?
http://www.petitiononline.com/FerretPI/petition.html

Our man in Havana

They discriminate because it often costs a fortune to treat most exotics!

I would love to be able to insure some of my more valuable animals such as the coatis & the tamarin & the reptiles & parrots.

Chiaki

even though it is more expensive to treat exotics, insuring them should still be an option. if the expertise is out there to treat them then getting them a physical as part of your policy shouldnt be an issue. yes, the payments on such animals such as tamarins and macaws would be higher(probably extortionate at first) due to the lack of knowledge and the price of treatment.
At the same time are horses not expensive to insure? the only difference is the sheer numbers and knowledge. There are equine courses in this country but none on reptiles or primates.
Common reptiles and "exotic" pets would be cheaper and affordable such as corn snakes, bearded dragons, african gray parrots, chinchilla's and ferrets as there is alot more people familiar with them. This means that there more statistics in their lifespan, diseases that they are prone to, current conditions etc etc.
This petition is to get insurance companies to rethink their lack of exotic pet insurance, to consider the money they are losing and how easy it would be to start insuring the more common pets first and trying working their way up to the more exotic.
to be fair there is alot of money for them to be made, we also want some assurance that if something goes wrong we will be covered. everyones happy?!

Sigma Force

Ireland now has rabbit insurance which is great but exotic insurance should be an option as well. Guinea pigs, ferrets, parrots and other birds etc. are very common nowdays. To be honest I don't find in general the vet fees for exotics any more expensive than for a rabbit or a dog or cat in fact because they are smaller things like antibiotic doses, anesthetic gas are in much smaller doses so cost less than for a dog for instance.

Perhaps the problem could be that not enough vets in Ireland specialise in exotics even with the insurance I'm sure a lot of people would find in very hard to find a vet in an emergency, general check ups grand they have time to travel but when it's an emergency some people have no where to go (and in turn sometimes are better off not keeping exotics because it can end in heartbreak because of the lack of experience from some vets).

Wouldn't say no to the insurance though, after all horses can be insured and they cost a lot more to treat than a wee ferret.

Chiaki

bump!

star-pants

Please refrain from 'bumping' your threads. If people wish to help out they will.

Vojera

I've enquired to a few places about getting my guinea pigs insured and they all said no due to a "lack of interest". That said, one of the places did rabbit insurance and tbh it was so expensive that you'd be better off putting that money in savings and keeping it aside than paying the insurance company.