"I have bid farewell to grandparents, neighbors, and classmates, but I did not cry for them like I did for my Hound. He was my first dog, the great canine love of my life."
The above quote made my drive home from work on Sept. 20 a tearful trip. Annmarie Kelly-Harbaugh's, "Hounded by grief over a canine companion," on NPR's All Things Considered was an article that reached me on a deep emotional level. Similarly, almost three years ago, within a matter of months, I lost both my beloved 86-year-old grandmother and my "fur baby," also known as Sheba, a 16-year-old cat I parented for 8 years. When my grandmother passed away after a long illness, I was very stoic, but when Sheba died a few months later, I was an emotional wreck.
Voluntary benefits are a vital part of an employee's benefits package—employers can use them to attract and retain talent while still controlling costs. But I'm shocked more employers aren't offering pet insurance as a voluntary benefit. In fact, although the number of companies offering pet insurance is growing in popularity, a recent article for Workforce.com reports only about 25 percent of Fortune 500 employers offer this voluntary benefit.
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Generally, voluntary benefits don't cost the employer but allows employees to pay discounted group rates and reduce their taxable income. More specifically, pet insurance helps to protect owners from large, unexpected vet bills and can often mean the difference between going into debt and euthanizing a pet. Therefore, pet insurance is a benefit that employees who are pet owners would likely appreciate.
Although all pet owners may not be as devoted to their pets as Kelly-Harbaugh and me, we are not "pet obsessed" eccentrics. Actually, we are members of a large and growing community. According to the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association, 62 percent of American households (72.9 million homes) now own at least one pet.
The survey also reveals U.S. pet owners spent $48.35 billion on their pets, including 14.1 billion for vet care in 2010. Considering all these facts, in my opinion, there's absolutely no justifiable reasons employers should not include pet insurance as a voluntary option. Offering such a 'warm and fuzzy' benefit is definitely a way for employers to show a significant portion of their employee population that they care.
As recent surveys show more than half of employees want more voluntary benefits, there is no better time than the present to include pet insurance as one of the options. For one thing, offering this benefit can help to differentiate you from your competitors. The top three products employers offer are long-term care, legal and property & casualty insurance, while less than a quarter of the largest employers currently offer pet insurance.
Also, more well-known insurance providers have entered the market and are offering comprehensive plans with fewer exclusions. In these tough economic times, more pet owners will need pet insurance to cover increasingly expensive veterinary costs. Vet bills are rising substantially faster than inflation, principally because more treatments and procedures are available today for pets. For example, major procedures—such as cancer treatments, replacement surgeries, and transplants—can easily cost thousands of dollars.
Offering this voluntary benefit just makes sense. So, benefits managers, why aren't you offering pet insurance?
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