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The Importance of Pet Dental Care
Pet Dental Insurance
The Importance of Pet Dental Care
Maintaining good dental hygiene is an essential part of caring for your pet and ensuring good health. In the same way that you feed your pet a healthy, balanced diet to prevent malnutrition, it’s important to keep your pet’s teeth clean to prevent dental disease. Just like regular exercise, dental care should be part of your dog or cat’s daily routine.
Does the Healthy Paws Plan Offer Dental Coverage?
The Healthy Paws pet insurance plan insures unexpected accidents and illnesses. When it comes to dental issues, the Healthy Paws plan includes insurance for the extraction and/or reconstruction of damaged teeth if the teeth were injured by an accident, as long as the injury is not pre-existing to policy coverage. Examples of dental claims that may be eligible for coverage include the extraction or reconstruction of a tooth that was fractured or broken when your pet was chewing on a bone, biting a fence, or involved in an accident.
When a policy excludes pre-existing conditions, this generally means that the costs for any ailments or injuries your pet had prior to pet insurance coverage would not be eligible for coverage. Enroll your pet as early as possible to help avoid pre-existing conditions.
Waiting Period for Dental Injuries
There is a 15-day waiting period for accidents and illnesses, which begins on the policy effective date. Your pet insurance policy effective date starts at 12:01 a.m. of the day following the date you enroll your pet.
What are the Exclusions for Dental Coverage?
The Healthy Paws pet insurance plan does not cover routine dental health care required to maintain the dental hygiene of your pet, such as brushing, veterinary dental cleanings, and extractions and reconstructions necessitated by dental disease.
Claims due to the lack of preventive dental care (eg. periodontal disease, which occurs due to tartar build-up from insufficient teeth brushing) and retention of deciduous teeth are not eligible for coverage. For additional information please click here to see policy specific provisions related to dental insurance coverage.
Common Covered Pet Dental Issues
Just as we need to take care of our teeth for our overall health, our pets need the same care. It’s important to brush their teeth regularly to keep them clean and prevent dental disease. Some common dental issues that can occur in dogs and cats that are covered** by the Healthy Paws plan are:
Broken or chipped teeth that were the result of an outside accident/trauma to the mouth.
Dental malocclusion: Most often a hereditary issue and not related to dental disease, a malocclusion results in overbites and underbites. When there is misalignment of the upper and lower teeth, there can be resulting injury, oftentimes to the roof of the mouth.
Stomatitis: Typically affecting cats, stomatitis occurs when the pet’s gums react to the presence of teeth, resulting in ulceration and/or severe inflammation of the gums. It can only be treated by extraction of the tooth/teeth. Coverage is contingent upon any prior and/or present dental disease.
Dentigerous cysts: These are oral cysts derived from the tissues that form the teeth. Oftentimes there will be unerupted teeth, with or without cysts that surround the crown. Unerupted or missing teeth are considered congenital, which makes this eligible for coverage.
** The conditions above are eligible for coverage as long as there were no signs or symptoms of the condition prior to enrollment or during any applicable waiting period, and subject to all policy terms and conditions.
For covered conditions, treatments that are eligible for coverage include anesthesia & supportive surgical care, dental radiographs, medications, nursing care and hospitalization. The Healthy Paws policy also covers root canals & reconstructions, crown placement, oral biopsies, cytology and bone grafts. If there is an accompanying dental cleaning, polish or prophy, that would be excluded from coverage regardless of the condition.
How to Brush Your Pet’s Teeth
Get started on your pet’s dental routine today to ensure healthy teeth and gums. Here are some helpful resources about at-home dog and cat dental care.
Our Commitment to Our Customers
The Healthy Paws pet insurance plan is easy to understand, we reimburse quickly, and you can count on us to help, especially when it comes to reducing the stress of caring for a sick pet.
Our commitment is to provide you and your pet with the best customer service and best pet insurance plan in the country. We are grateful to our pet-passionate customers for sharing their love of our plan and service by giving us positive reviews at Consumers Advocate.
Get an instant quote now and take the first step to protect your furry best friend.
