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Two policies can show the same deductible, the same reimbursement percentage and the same vet bill, and pay out different amounts. The reason sits in a part of the policy almost nobody reads: the order in which the deductible and the percentage are applied, and whether the deductible is paid once a year or once per condition. This page explains both, with the insurers' own published formulas, because this is arithmetic you can check, not opinion.
This page is general information about how dog insurance works. It is not financial advice, it is not a quote, and it does not sell insurance. Policy terms vary by insurer, by state and over time. Every insurer fact on this page was read from that insurer's own published sample policy, official disclosure or official product pages on 10 November 2026, and the policy wording on the provider's own site is the only version that counts when you buy. Always read the sample policy, including the exclusions and the definition of a pre-existing condition, before you pay for any plan.
Annual deductible is the US market standard: eleven of the twelve major insurers in our policy research use it. You meet it once per policy year, from any combination of claims, and reimbursement flows for the rest of that year. It resets every year.
Per-condition deductible is Trupanion's structure, and Trupanion is alone with it in this market. You pay the deductible once for each separate condition, and then never again for that condition, for the life of the policy. A dog treated for the same joint problem across six years meets that condition's deductible in year one only. The trade-off runs the other way for a dog with many unrelated problems: each new condition opens a new deductible. Trupanion's Canadian pages publish the selectable range, $0 to $2,000; its US sample policy does not print the range. One historical note: older Nationwide policy forms used per-incident deductibles, but its current plans are annual.
Insurers publish their claim formula in disclosures and sample policies, and the market splits into two camps.
Deductible first: (bill - deductible) x percentage. Embrace, Spot, MetLife and ASPCA work this way; MetLife prints the formula in its official disclosure as (Total Treatment Cost - Deductible) x Covered Percentage.
Percentage first: (bill x percentage) - deductible. Healthy Paws, Lemonade and Pets Best work this way. Healthy Paws' own disclosure works an example in public: a $1,200 bill at 90% with a $100 deductible pays $1,200 x 90% - $100 = $980.
On the same bill, deductible-first always pays out slightly more. The reason is simple once you see it: when the deductible comes off first, you effectively lose only the unreimbursed slice of it, while under percentage-first the whole deductible comes off the final amount. Concretely, on a $3,000 bill at 80% with a $250 deductible, deductible-first pays $2,200 and percentage-first pays $2,150. On a $3,000 bill at 70% with a $500 deductible, the gap widens: $1,750 against $1,600, a $150 difference from word order alone. Neither camp advertises which one it is in. You find it in the disclosure documents, which is where we found it.
| Insurer | Deductible options | Structure |
|---|---|---|
| Lemonade | $100 / $250 / $500 / $750 | Annual |
| MetLife Pet | $0 to $2,500 | Annual; drops by $25 or $50 for each claim-free year |
| ASPCA Pet Insurance | $100 / $250 / $500 | Annual |
| Pumpkin | $100 / $250 / $500 / $1,000 | Annual |
| Fetch | $250 to $2,500 (online signup range) | Annual |
| Pets Best | $50 to $1,000 (varies by policy form) | Annual |
| Nationwide | $250 standard; $100 to $1,000 by plan | Annual on current plans |
| Trupanion | $0 to $2,000 (Canadian published range) | Per-condition, once per condition for the dog's life |
| Embrace | Options not published; worked examples use $100 to $300 | Annual |
| Figo | Range not published | Annual |
| Spot | Set on the declarations page; not in the sample policy | Annual |
| Healthy Paws | Values not published on the pages we read | Annual |
Three honest points. First, the deductible is the part of the bill you have agreed to self-insure, so the right size is the amount you could pay on a bad day without distress, not the amount that makes the monthly premium look smallest. Second, no insurer in our research publishes how each deductible level changes the premium, so treat any exact claimed saving with suspicion until it comes from that insurer's own quote for your dog; our cost estimator deliberately leaves deductible out of its premium math for this reason, and shows its effect in the claim simulator instead, where the effect is real. Third, if your dog is young and healthy, the structure questions on this page (annual versus per-condition, and the calculation order) will matter more over a lifetime of claims than a few dollars of monthly premium. The companion pages on waiting periods and pre-existing conditions cover the other two terms that decide what a policy really pays.
The amount of covered vet costs you pay yourself before the insurer's reimbursement starts. With an annual deductible, you pay it once per policy year across all claims. With a per-condition deductible, you pay it once per separate condition. Trupanion is the only major US insurer in our research using the per-condition kind, and it never resets: pay it for a condition once, and that condition never carries a deductible again.
Insurers price that way in practice, but none of the twelve insurers we researched publishes a table showing how much each deductible choice changes the premium. Anyone who gives you an exact saving for choosing a higher deductible, without it being an insurer's own quote for your dog, is guessing. That is why our cost estimator does not pretend deductible choice changes its premium range.
It is the order of the sums, and it changes the payout. On a $3,000 bill at 80% with a $250 deductible: deductible-first insurers pay ($3,000 - $250) x 80% = $2,200; percentage-first insurers pay ($3,000 x 80%) - $250 = $2,150. Same bill, same deductible, same percentage, $50 apart, purely because of the order in the policy's formula.
From their own published formulas and disclosures: Embrace, Spot, MetLife and ASPCA subtract the deductible before applying the percentage. Healthy Paws, Lemonade and Pets Best apply the percentage first and subtract the deductible after. Trupanion's US sample policy does not state the order. The full comparison is on this page.
An annual deductible suits a dog likely to need care for several different problems in a year, because one payment unlocks reimbursement for all of them. A per-condition deductible suits a dog with one long-running condition, because after the first payment that condition is deductible-free for life, but every new condition starts a new deductible. Neither is universally better; it depends on the pattern of care you expect.
At one insurer, yes: MetLife reduces the deductible by $25 or $50 for each year you make no claims, according to its published FAQ. It is the only deductible-reduction feature we found in the twelve US insurers' documents.