Right and I totally get that for insurance companies as frustrating as it is… they have to make a profit. This just feels like if statefarm called me up and said “hey, about your home/auto insurance policy… we’ve decided not to cover you for auto insurance but we will still bill you as if we were.”
Just an FYI, I haven’t been reading your replies because it became obvious you weren’t reading mine. Or you have a reading comprehension problem. I thought you should know before you draft another essay I won’t read.
That’s exactly how I see them. The biggest thing you’re paying for is the coverage so if you’re not getting said coverage you shouldn’t pay the same as if you were. Who knew that was such a radical philosophy…
:lol: :lol: Well, that part isn’t legal, so no they couldn’t do that. But they absolutely could drop your entire coverage. And they can increase your premiums if/when you start having things happen that cost them money. All different roads to Rome.
Well, I’ve been quoting your posts, and clearly reading them. You’re apparently just not liking what they’re saying. You have a very uneducated view of how insurance works, and it’s skewing your perception of how a supplement company should work.
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Who do you think, in either the medical or auto insurance industry, is paying for those who don’t have coverage?
Hint - it’s the people who DO have coverage. I am not just paying for things I might need in the figure, I am helping foot the bill for everyone who is legally required to be treated even if they don’t have insurance.
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It costs the same whether you enroll or not and whether you enroll and follow all of the guidelines affecting payout eligibility (including annual fecal tests, etc.) or not. The product cost is the product cost. They offer an insurance service with it. The insurance service operates like any other.
The marketing is not for colicky horses even though at least the university here puts basically any horse that is hospitalized for colic on Platinum Balance (one of the ingredients in Platinum GI). The marketing is:
“Equine gut health is not only important for proper digestion, but also immunity, as an estimated 70-80% of the immune system lives in a horse’s gastrointestinal system. This veterinary-developed formula provides a gastrointestinal-focused approach to total equine health by providing omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants, vitamins, trace minerals, along with Bio-Sponge®, prebiotics, probiotics and glutamine for GI support.”
"Supports Horses:
- In Training or Competition
- For Wellness
- With Digestive Health Concerns
- During Travel
- With Difficulty Maintaining Weight
- With Loose Stool or Occasional Diarrhea
- On Antibiotic or NSAID Therapy
- Also helpful for Senior Horses"
Many people opt to “self insure” their horses for all kinds of potential veterinary costs rather than pay premiums for policies that may or may not cover the costs anyway or for which exclusions start to add up. You have the option not to buy this or any other supplement.
Sure the policy is used as a marketing ploy, but it is an insurance policy and the terms and conditions are consistent with a lot of equine insurance options for which premiums are paid. “Predatory” is a big stretch.
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If the product works so well you won’t need to worry about being reimbursed because your horse won’t be in danger of colic again. Right?
If you know what contributed to her colic in the first place, then you can be extra diligent in the next year to not have those conditions again. Many times a horse will colic once and never again.
It makes sense for them to weed out chronic colic prone horses. Or they would be out of business.
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Sure, you can use Succeed right away, and be covered. Then in a year, after you’ve spent all the money keeping your horse on it, he colics, and you find out it’s one of the many colic causes they don’t cover at all. Your choice.
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It sounds like you think people should just pay for insurance when the shit is about to hit the fan. That’s not the way it works for anything. You don’t just insure your house during hurricane season, you don’t just insure your car for road trips, and you don’t just insure your horse when it’s sick or lame.
When insurance underwriters write a policy that includes exclusions, they ABSOLUTELY bill you the same as without those exclusions. You don’t get some % of your policy off every year because your major medical policy doesn’t cover colic. Do you seriously believe that’s the way it works? Because it very much is not.
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My apologies, it is not my intention to come across as condescending and I was not inferring she was managed poorly (hence my quote above about how these management practices are not “bad”, they are just industry standard). Just sharing some hard-won experience, and what has helped and worked for me. I wish you the best of luck for your horse.
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Right but their insurance IS part of the product. It doesn’t matter if they call it complimentary. If your horse is eligible, you follow the guidelines, and you spend the money, you’re entitled to 10k of insurance. That’s not an insignificant amount of “insurance” and that’s why they cost as much as they do. The risk of paying out a surgical colic IS part of their costs. Just because it’s not a tangible product doesn’t male it irrelevant. That’s a BIG part of platinum/ smartpak’s value.
Some people look at it as expensive insurance with free supplements or expensive supplements with free insurance but in the end, the whole product is very much a compunction of the two. I don’t see how getting one without the other for the same price isn’t a rip off.
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I understand you are still probably pretty raw from having gone through this ordeal with your horse… colic is so freaking scary. I am glad everything turned out OK.
FWIW, I do not use the PP supplement you are referencing - so no crowd think here. I have looked at their program as part of a preventative maintenance kind of strategy but chose not to enroll. My horses have coverage through a regular equine policy and it includes supplemental colic coverage. FWIW it costs a lot more than $500.
I do use a different PP product - it’s the only thing that has made a material difference for one of my guys who has seasonal allergies, and it makes the difference between him being comfortable for several months of the year or having a pretty significant cough.
That said, the coverage you are talking about is part of a program and not just a product. The product is only a part of what you sign up for when you enroll, and maybe not even the main component of the program, which includes other regular veterinary care, worming and so on. For horses without a recent history of colic, this kind of program is typically expected to minimize the likelihood of a colic episode, and thus the various companies (PP, Smartpak etc) are willing to offer it as an incentive.
The likelihood of a horse with a recent (1 year) prior history of colic to have another episode is considerably higher than horses without that history unfortunately. (Citation here if interested.) That is why most insurance products would exclude coverage for that particular illness. PP’s product is not a colic preventative and they are understandably reluctant to insure against that significantly higher risk. That doesn’t make them predatory.
I would evaluate the product in terms of what it can do for your horse’s well being rather than on the basis of incentives like reimbursement for potential vet expenses over the next year. Hopefully you get a plan in place, your horse stays well on the new program, and a year from now you could access those additional benefits if desired.
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Uh, NO. You are not ENTITLED to anything. Good lord. If you buy the product, you get the product. If your horse is ELIGIBLE for the insurance, you get the insurance. It’s their product–they get to decide how to price it, how to manage the insurance side of it, and what sort of rules to implement to make the lines cross. They’re not a charity, and they don’t owe you anything. Their goal, at the end of the day, is to make money. Just like every other single insurance product out there, and every other supplement product out there.
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I’m not sure why they are engaging in predatory practices, though. You have gotten upset because your horse doesn’t meet the eligibility requirements. If the horse was uninsured and you went to buy a MM/mortality/colic policy shortly after a colic, you’d bet that would be excluded. And it’s a question they ask on the application form. They might be happy to sell you some insurance with that exclusion, or they may decline to cover the horse at all. If you did buy a policy, your premium isn’t going to be discounted if some coverage was excluded due to the colic.
If you think the supplement is priced too high, you are welcome not to buy it. It is one of the more expensive ones. There are alternatives made by other companies for cheaper without insurance.
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I did the math on Arenus Guard Gold, as it’s one of the “colic prone” options for the Arenus colic coverage:
Week 1 - 8: 5 scoops a day
Week 9 - 10: 4 scoops a day
Week 11 - 14: 3 scoops a day
Week 15+: 2 scoops a day
It’s $350 for 25 pounds/85 scoops.
So…
Week 1 - 8 is $20.59/day
Week 9 - 10 is $16.47/day
Week 11 - 14 is $12.35/day
Week 15+ is $8.24/day
So nearly four grand for the first year, without shipping/tax/etc and without counting the veterinary requirements.
For a lifetime coverage of $10k.
Wow. And this thread is a rant about Platinum? :lol: :lol:
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That’s not the part I’m upset about… frustrated yes. I’m mostly upset that they act like the insurance is just a nice little bonus out of the kindness of their hearts and not a huge part of the actual product. It is a part of it. If you don’t want to insure “risky” horses, fine but that’s insane to not at least discount the product if your horse isn’t eligible for the insurance part of it.
YIKES. Who can afford to feed that as directed, especially long term?
OP: I’m sorry you’re dealing with colic issues. I hope your horse does well going forward. Unfortunately, exclusion policies like this are absolutely the norm. For example, my horse is recovering from a DDFT injury. When I renew his insurance policy next year, that entire leg will be excluded, not just the tendons/ligaments. Yeah, it sucks, but it’s worth it to have the rest of the horse covered in the event of a problem.
The reality is that Platinum/SP, etc. created these programs and they get to decide the terms and conditions. Don’t like it? Don’t buy the supplement.
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I think this is where the disconnect is. The insurance is NOT part of the product. Buying certain product(s) and also agreeing to put your horse into a specific, veterinarian-supervised program (at your additional expense) enables you to APPLY for the insurance product offering. The application has hurdles - prior history of colic being one of them.
The insurance coverage is essentially a marketing expense - the entire program is geared to ensuing that veterinarians recommend PP products (because for every client that enrolls, the vet gets the management work and fees.)
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Isn’t that wild?! And can you imagine…if you’re buying it from your vet, instead of online…and paying their markup? :eek: :eek: :eek:
I’m going to remove myself from this thread because I don’t think most of you are getting my point and now it’s just turned into recreational lecturing at my expense… which I’m good without. If I want to argue with people there’s plenty of better battles than defending the integrity of the equine supplement market.
My thoughts are that if you’re going to exclude horses from coverage you shouldn’t charge as if they were entitled to that coverage. Just because you call something “complimentary” doesn’t mean it is. If your boarding barn offers “complimentary” blanketing services, or turnout, or whatever that just means that they’ve factored in that additional cost of labor into the price you pay. Same thing with colic supplement programs. Personally, I feel it’s a rip off to pay the same as somebody else if you’re unable to use the insurance. If some of you can afford to spend that much money on one supplement alone, good for you, but personally, I think you’re getting ripped off.
