Blue Cross plan adds pet insurance from Philly firm
Capital Blue Cross offers workers PetPlan
Blue Cross plan adds pet insurance from Philly firm
Joseph N. DiStefano
Close to 50 million Americans lack health insurance. Obama's health reform law is supposed to reduce that number, if Republicans don't sink it first.
Meanwhile Capital Blue Cross, based in Harrisburg, has started insuring pets, under a program managed by a Philadelphia company Petplan, founded by two Wharton School graduates from dog-crazy England. "We're excited. We think we're the first" Blue to offer pet insurance, Stacy Balaban, Capital's senior director for strategic development, told me. Employers welcomed the "voluntary benefit" because it cost them nothing - premiums for varying schedules of pets, deductibles and coverage levels are paid by plan members, and the policies are administered electronically by Petplan. Capital gets paid a commission on each policy. "It helps diversify our revenue stream," Balaban said. "Our board's been very supportive." For a lot of Americans, "pets are family members," Balaban added. Some 500 Harrisburg-area residents jammed the company's "pet/people health fair" last weekend collecting information on Petplan and other services. Petplan is the project of a married couple, Chris and Natasha Ashton, who moved to Philadelphia to attend Penn's Wharton graduate business school in 2001. They were investigating security business opportunities (Chris is a former Royal Marine officer) when their cat, Bodey, got sick and needed a kidney. "It cost us $5,000 and our apartment," Chris told me at his pet-occupied (but also spanking-clean) office in the former Scott Paper Co. headquarters near Philadelphia International Airport. In Britain and Scandinavia, the Ashtons knew, millions of cats and dogs were insured. The Ashtons figured similar penetration in the US was possible. It was a mostly untapped market. They reviewed pet insurance data from the UK (since similar data didn't exist here.) They licensed the PetPlan brand from a British company owned by Allianz, the giant German insurer. In 2006, through Penn, they met Vernon and Shirley Hill, the Commerce Bank founders (they now operate Metro Bank UK), pet owners and major donors to Penn's vet school, and Brian Tierney, the ad agency owner (and former Inquirer publisher) who was an entrepreneur-in-residence at Wharton that year.
Hill added Petplan as an employee benefit at Commerce. Tierney offered marketing advice. Natasha says Travelocity, SC Johnson and other employers followed Commerce, boosting Petplan's sales. Veterinarians at first resisted pet insurance, Chris Ashton says, "because they were afraid it would destroy their profession, as human health insurers have degraded the medical profession. But they have also realized with the current economic climate people wouldn't be able to afford their services." Industry groups have become supportive, he says.
Chris cites industry estimates that over 1 million Americans now insure their pets, with written premiums approaching $350 million. He says his company accounts for about one-tenth of the total business, in competition with small firms in California and elsewhere. The company publishes a magazine - they call it fetch! with a small "f" - that is thick with pet-supply advertising, and plans further merchandising. Petplan's backers, besides local investors, include an arm of Holland's van Lanschot banking family. Allianz is Petplan's underwriter. Nationwide and Aetna are also underwriting pet insurers. The industry seems ripe for consolidation. Will Petplan be sold at a tidy price, or will it become a major Philadelphia e
Oooh, better read the fine print very carefully!
I have yet to see pet insurance that's worth the paper it's written on. Buying - or not buying - any health insurance is a gamble. You're either betting you - or in this case your pet - will or won't get sick.
The house - any of the "Blues" - is not known to play with dice that aren't loaded.
Comment removed.- What a wasted and meaningless rant. The article is about Capital BC, not IBC. Maybe you can use an intern to help with your comments.
— Phillies Forever - "Obama's health reform law is supposed to reduce that number, if Republicans don't sink it first." --- One can come up with many ideas to reduce that number. Just because its Obama's doesn't make his way better. A better way would be to truly reform the industry, not just give healthcare away for next to nothing. I find it funny that these companies are willing to insure pets before people. Then again, medical care for people is ungodly high while pet procedures are relatively low. Obama will not be changing that any time soon.— psyrus
- I don't know which pet procedures you think are "relatively low". Most procedures my pets have had done are very expensive. Just a dental cleaning costs hundreds of dollars. Until you get all the required blood work and pre surgical work, then the cleaning etc...its very expensive. And...you don't have an option to not have pre-op work done. I can go to my dentist for a cleaning and its less than 100.00
For routine blood work and 2 x-rays you're also looking at over 200.00 minimum. That does not include the office visit or anything extra like medications or special tests.— msilgen - Great. Can't f**k enough people, time to f**k some animals. What? Couldn't make enough money price fixing and illegally denying human claims like your BC/BS of Michigan pals? For-profit health "insurance". Awesome. Look for petcare costs to increase and their life expectancy decrease - at least as compared to the rest of the world's pets.— CiceroSpuriousDeodatus
- Uh, Tonsil, Egghead, yo: Capital Blue Cross, which is adding the pet insurance plan, is the Harrisburg Blue Cross company. Joe Frick runs Independence Blue Cross of Philadelphia, which is a different company that, last I checked, wasn't yet offering to let its customers pay for pet insurance on the side.— Joe D
@ psyrus - I think Tonsil Stone touched on the Pet Insurance point in their first few sentences. I think that's IBC's thought process, out of desperation. The person who introduced the idea probably though it was quite clever. Probably just trying to suck up some small, fast, drama-free revenue for whatever reason. Maybe to line the top-cats pockets with a few more beer bucks before things hit the fan. The days of the uber-mega health insurer are numbered unless major reforms take place, and I mean MAJOR.— EGGHEAD.- Yea, folks. probably best to actually read the article before freaking out. I guess it's the "end" of Capital Blue Cross as we know it. Seems to be a lot of effort to type out a rant that ultimately makes no sense.— newmember
- The people who blast "Obamacare" the loudest know the least about the Health Insurance Industry.
PPOs are literally subsidized by the government - how's that for "free market enterprise"?
And when the Medicare Part D - prescription drug - plan was cooked up by congress it was a Republican Congress that did the cooking.
In well documented reports during and after the construction of Medicare Part D no one - absolutely no one - was permitted to join the negotiations other than Republican members of Congress AND representatives of the prescription drug industry.
What they ended up with was another health insurance plan - subsidized by The Federal Government directly to the health insurance industry.
Those subsidies will be discontinued under the Obama health insurance reform program and that's what the industry is screaming loudest about. And the screams are veiled lies that say Obama wants to reduce benefits. He doesn't! He only wants - demands - to stop subsidizing the Healthcare Insurance Industry. - Universal Health Care is becoming a dead certain reality as the financial crisis grows worldwide. Either the government steps in and relieves the pressure for the citizenry or the the revolution that is sweeping the world will push many to extremes that they never would have contemplated otherwise. Pet insurance for the aristocracy while your child stays sick and crippled or when your spouse dies due to lack of medicine is fuse racing toward a powder keg of rage the size of the Grand Canyon.— Fernando08
- Great, unemployed workers can't afford health insurance but pets can get it.— Boru
- Comment removed.
- "Unemployed workers can't afford health insurance but pets can get it. "
Ummmmmm that would be correct!
BUT it STILLL STANDS that Unemployed Workers who CAN afford Health Insurance CAN 'Get It 'TOO!
ALSO: ONLY pets with Peoples who can Afford Pet Health Insurance will 'Get It.' The Rest of the Pets (like Peoples) will remain doomed to the system of 'Only Those who can Afford It will Deserve to Get It.'— acitizen
