This week, a woman called our home phone and offered us pet insurance. I fell off my chair, first because the home phone rang, secondly because there was someone on the other end offering me something other than a better deal on electricity. And thirdly because, well, because. Come on, pet insurance?
Over here, we currently hold insurance policies for our lives, our house, our television, our cars, our income, our health, and the kids’ teeth, and now they’re suggesting we should cover ourselves in case our animals get sick?
The sheer weight of it all, the anticipation that something will go wrong, the expensive level of fear we need to live with. And the forms we have to fill in, oh, dear lord, the forms. I know why some people don’t do insurance. It’s not just that it’s expensive or that insurance might actually be just some massive multinational attempting to extract money from frightened people in the suburbs who expect to be burgled or struck down by illness any minute.
It’s the forms. They are arduous, boring and extreme in their quest for information. Last year, the other adult in this house needed to upgrade one of our insurance policies, but left the forms on his desk for eight months because he couldn’t bare to face them. There were just too many pages, he said.
And I’m no help in this area. I struggle with the school-excursion forms. I get the surname, first name, suburb street sections and emergency medical information bits confused. It took three tries before they would even look at my passport application because my signature is too large and I kept going out of the designated areas. I’m not good at forms at all. Plus, insurance people just need so much personal information. Right now I think my broker knows more about me than my own mother does.
A warning. Next time you apply for health insurance, it is quite possible the insurance people might need to know what your doctor’s salary is, the marital status of your physiotherapist, and the sexual orientation of your next-door neighbour.
And I love that they ask people over 40 if they’ve ever had back or joint pain or issues with cholesterol. Are they serious? Of course we have. We’re getting on, guys, that’s why we have insurance.
Oh, and let’s not forget the phone calls. Those insurance brokers sure can talk up a storm. They can talk for hours, and that’s just the bit where they tell you your conversation has to be recorded for training and legal purposes and will be later transcribed into a document and checked by a supervisor and then photocopied and mailed out to you.
Anyway, pet insurance. The thing that bothers me most is the supposition that the healthier your pet is, the happier you are. That by signing on the dotted line you’ll have some sort of peace of mind or a guarantee that your animals will live forever. The insurance companies are trying to sell intangibles, and usually to pensioners.
There are people I know who don’t have insurance for anything. They wing it, pay for things as they come up. They may be on to something, but I’m not prepared to chance the big stuff, like the house burning down.
I’m pretty sure, though, that I will be able to cope, financially and emotionally, if one of our dogs gets diarrhoea.
