Why Trupanion
Pricing Overview
Your Cost
Rate Changes
Why it’s hard to budget for veterinary care
Why Trupanion
Pricing Overview
Your Cost
A bird's eye view of our pricing
You don’t know in advance whether your pet is going to be a ‘lucky’ pillar of health, an ‘unlucky’ accident-prone pet, or anything in between.
You don’t know when in your pet’s life an injury or illness will happen.
Injuries and illnesses don’t happen at convenient or predictable times.
Large veterinary invoices can cost tens of thousands of dollars, and inflation can cause that to rise even more during your pet’s lifetime.
The problem we're solving
The solution: Trupanion pays first
In addition to unpredictable costs, there’s a second part of the budgeting problem—most traditional pet insurance models rely on reimbursement, making you pay the entire bill upfront. If your pet suddenly had $20,000 or $30,000 worth of medical bills, could you afford to pay out of pocket? Probably not.
We can solve that problem by paying your veterinarian directly, within seconds, while you’re checking out—so you only have to pay your portion of the bill.
We pay first
Our job is to understand how the cost and usage of veterinary treatment changes over time, and then factor that into our members’ rates fairly and accurately. With our focus on data and our pricing promise—to put at least 71 cents of every dollar directly towards paying our members’ invoices—you can rest easy knowing that your coverage will always be there when you need it.
How our pricing works
Our Trupanion family is made up of loving, responsible pet owners and their beloved pets, whose health may be lucky, unlucky, or average. This mighty community comes together and shares the financial risks of illness and injury—everyone helps cover the cost when any pet is sick or injured.
WE SHARE THE RISK FAIRLY
Our team of experts spend all day, every day studying this shared risk, reviewing our data, and understanding the expected usage of veterinary care for similar pets. They create pricing categories—more than 1.2 million—to make sure this risk is distributed fairly and accurately among our members. You can learn more about our pricing categories in the ‘Your Cost’ section.
Our responsibility is to understand the costs and trends associated with each category and add a 29% margin. This allows us to put at least 71 cents of every dollar towards paying invoices while providing 24/7 support for our members. We believe this is the highest value proposition in our industry.
WE ANALYZE THE DATA
The usage and costs of veterinary care are constantly changing—but our commitment to our members and their pets never will. We review monthly costs regularly and may change them so that we can keep giving at least 71 cents of every dollar back to our Trupanion family.
WE MONITOR THE COSTS
How we stand out from the pack
We don’t punish unlucky pets by increasing your rates because you’ve submitted invoices. Although your monthly cost is likely to increase over time, any changes will be in response to broader cost and usage trends—not because your pet was sick or injured. After all, covering illnesses and injuries is why you bought insurance in the first place!
We don’t automatically increase rates because your pet gets older.
We don’t dictate veterinary care or try to control the costs. We respect the decisions that you and your veterinarian make about your pet’s care—our job is to help you afford that care, without any caps
or limits.
Why we don’t dictate veterinary costs
How your specific cost is calculated
The ‘Pricing overview’ section reviews our pricing at a high level—now we’ll dive deeper into pricing categories and explain how we determine specific monthly costs.
Pricing categories
Our goal is to split the financial risks of illness and injury equally among our members. However, we know that the cost and use of veterinary care isn’t the same in all locations or for all pets. For example, a French bulldog is likely to use more veterinary care over their lifetime than a medium mixed breed dog. Similarly, the cost of veterinary treatment for pets in Manhattan, NY, is likely to be higher than it is for pets in Boise, ID, simply because the cost of living is higher in Manhattan. So, how can we split the costs fairly and accurately when there are so many variables?
The answer – pricing categories. We’ve created more than 1.2 million pricing categories to help us compare the costs of pets who are similar to each other. The main categories we use are:
Trupanion’s pricing philosophy
Finn is a golden retriever living in Portland, Oregon. He’s 4 years old now, but he joined Trupanion when he was 2. Here’s how we’d determine Finn’s
monthly cost:
Crunching the numbers
After paying more than $2 billion in veterinary invoices over the past two decades, we know the ‘average’ cost for pets in each of these categories. We take those averages and add 29%, which is the cost of doing business—paying invoices in seconds and employing an all-star team to help you 24/7. That’s your monthly cost today, and you can rest easy knowing that at least 71% of your monthly cost is helping to pay invoices for pets who are sick or injured.
Since the costs and use of veterinary care are always changing, we review your monthly cost regularly. If we notice that any of your pricing categories have increased—for example, maybe more pets in your community have been getting care recently—then we’ll need to adjust rates accordingly.
Rewarding loyalty
You made a great decision by signing up for Trupanion, and we want to recognize your commitment to providing a lifetime of coverage for your pet. That’s why we determine your monthly cost based on the age your pet was when you signed up, instead of their current age. This often saves you money, and it’s our small way of saying ‘thanks’ for being a member.
Monthly cost example
Meet Finn
• What’s the average cost for golden retrievers?
What’s the average cost for dogs in Portland, and for dogs in Oregon State?
• What’s the average cost for 2-year-old dogs?
• What’s the average cost for male dogs?
Once we know that number, we’ll add 29% on top, and voila! That’s Finn’s monthly cost.
Why prices change
You might have seen your monthly cost increase or decrease over the years. Wondering why? Here’s the short answer: monthly costs change because we don’t dictate veterinary care.
In order to keep monthly costs static, we would need to know the average use and cost of veterinary care for your pet’s entire lifetime—and we’d need to know that when you sign up. Although we have a very good understanding of those costs today, and even what they looked like 20 years ago, we don’t know exactly what they’ll be in the future. Here’s why:
As more people get medical insurance for their pets, they might be able to take advantage of more expensive medical treatments. This doesn’t mean that the cost of treatments ha s gone up – just that members can make choices based on best medicine rather than on cost.
Advancements in veterinary medicine might provide access to new, more expensive treatment options.
Veterinarians may refer more business to specialty clinics, allowing pets to get the absolute best treatment possible.
Here are some of the cost increases we’ve seen for several common conditions between 2020 and 2022:*
MORE PETS IN YOUR COMMUNITY MIGHT ACCESS VETERINARY CARE IN THE FUTURE
INFLATION WILL CHANGE OVER TIME
Rate Changes
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Our Pricing Promise
When a decision is for the life of your pet, we think the research is well worth it. And so is Trupanion.
It’s hard to budget for the unexpected, unpredictable costs of veterinary care on your own—and that’s why Trupanion exists. We understand the costs and share the financial risk of injury and illness equally among our members, so you’ll always have access to the care your pet needs.
The cost of everything from gasoline to groceries has gone up lately, and veterinary care is no exception. In fact, according to American Veterinary Medical Association News, mean annual spending on veterinary visits from 2020 to 2022 increased 62% for households with one dog, and 70% for households with one cat. That’s why we keep a close eye on how inflation affects veterinary cost — so our members don’t have to!
Changing costs of care
Vomiting & Diarrhea: Medication to treat vomiting and diarrhea has increased by 12%, and the cost of diagnostic tests has gone up too. X-rays for this have increased 14%, and Urinalysis has increased 18%.
Otitis: Cytology (a procedure used to identify or rule out the presence of infection) for an ear infection/inflammation has increased by 60%
Mass: Surgery for a mass has gone up 24%
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Simply put, the use of veterinary care impacts the costs—and that use is constantly changing. Our job is to understand the average cost and monitor it over time, so that we’re always charging our members a fair and accurate price without changing or reducing your pet’s coverage.