A torn tendon after a fall, kidney failure or an infectious disease – if the cat is sick or injured, people suffer too. Often enough, the wallet too: if an operation or complex treatment in the veterinary clinic is necessary, the costs can add up to several thousand euros. And it will soon be even more expensive. Experts expect prices in veterinary medicine to increase by an average of 20 percent. The reason: From November 22, 2022, a new fee schedule for veterinarians will apply.
As a cat owner, you can take out animal health insurance. There are two types of policies you can choose from: Surgical cost insurance (OP insurance) or comprehensive health insurance. Stiftung Warentest offers comparisons for both types of cat health insurance.
Why the comparison of cat health insurance is worthwhile for you
- test results. The tables from Stiftung Warentest show the contributions, conditions and benefits of 59 cat surgical insurance policies and 78 comprehensive cat health insurance policies. Our comparison contains the policies of almost all providers active on the German market – from Agila to Allianz to Uelzener. We evaluated the level of performance of the offers. It ranges from very high to low.
- The best cat insurance for you. Our cat health insurance test will help you decide what’s right for you: surgical insurance or comprehensive health insurance. You will learn how powerful the individual offers are and what they cost. If you are looking for value for money, our tariff recommendations will find the cheapest among the high-performance offers for our two sample cats: a six-month-old and a seven-year-old mixed-breed cat.
- model calculation. Using example treatments, you can see what veterinary costs you can expect. The table shows how much the insurer reimburses in the respective tariff. In addition, in the checklist “Sticking points in the contract”, we say what you have to pay particular attention to when concluding the contract.
- Magazine article as PDF. After activation, you will receive the magazine article from Finanztest 12/22 for download.
Find the right animal health insurance
Purebred cats or mixed breed cats, cat insurance for an indoor cat or for a cat with freedom of movement – with our comparison, everyone will find the right insurance cover for their house tiger.
It is best to insure the kitty while she is young and as healthy as possible. But even those who take in an older cat, for example from animal welfare, will still find suitable offers in the test.
High-performance surgical insurance for cats can be had for less than 100 euros a year. These policies are also affordable for older animals. For the more comprehensive protection of a comprehensive health insurance, pet owners have to plan more than three times as much. The older a cat is when the contract is signed, the more expensive it becomes. Even in the current contract, the premiums continue to rise with the increasing age of the cat, especially in the case of high-performance cat insurance policies.
Tip: If you click on the “List of 137 Products Tested” above under the table of contents, you will find the names of all tested cat insurance offers.
Important for cat insurance: the fine print
It is important to take out insurance with as few benefit restrictions as possible so that the surgical costs or the costs for complex non-surgical treatment are largely covered if the worst comes to the worst. Stiftung Warentest has examined all aspects that matter.
Here the devil is often in the detail: For example, some insurers exclude all operations or treatments that can be traced back to a congenital disease or malformation – even if the cat did not show any signs of illness when the contract was concluded.
In other cases, the reimbursement is limited to a certain maximum amount per year, or the costs for the veterinarian or animal clinic are only covered up to a certain rate of the fee schedule. If a vet bill contains higher fees, customers must pay the difference themselves in this case.
Performance plays the biggest role in comparison
In order for cat owners to find the best health insurance for their cats, we looked at the benefits included in the contract – and the places where insurers limit or even exclude benefits. We did not assign a Stiftung Warentest quality rating, but divided the offers into groups with a very high, high, medium or low performance level.
In order to assess the level of benefits of a tariff, we calculated exactly how much of the costs for two example treatments or operations are covered by the insurers in the individual tariffs – for example for a complicated fracture after falling from the balcony.
We explain how the costs are made up in our example cases in detail under “This is how we tested”. We also checked which veterinary services are insured and whether and to what extent the insurers exclude illnesses from insurance cover.
Cat health insurance comparison
- Test results for 59 surgical insurance policies for cats 12/2022
- Test results for 78 comprehensive health insurance policies for cats 12/2022
Much more information for cats and their people
Provide the kitty with the best care and maybe even save money at the same time: Our current wet cat food test and our cat litter test reveal how this works with lots of useful information for owners.
