Any veterinarian you want
Founded in 1980, Veterinary Pet Insurance is the oldest and largest pet-insurance company in the United States. The company says it has sold over 1 million policies for all types of pets. However, it has covered birds and other small animals (21 types in all, including rabbits, hamsters, mice and ferrets) only since 2000.

The most alluring aspect of VPI is that, unlike American Pet Plan and Pet Assure, it lets you use any veterinarian you want. Its only enrollment restrictions for birds are that they must be at least three months old and in the owner's possession for at least sixty days.

Even small birds can be expensive to take to the veterinarian. It cost Bill Selby and his wife, Chris Okon, of San Francisco a total of $2500 to save Alfie the cockatiel from a kidney infection.

The VPI avian benefits schedule lists 242 conditions ranging from relatively minor problems such as delayed molt to cancer and even self-mutilation. The company says it covers thousands of additional bird illnesses.

The monthly avian premiums are based on size: $7 for small birds weighing 50 grams or less (finches, canaries, love birds, parakeets); $10 for medium birds weighing between 50 grams and 300 grams (cockatiels, conures, pionus); and $13 for large birds weighing from 301 grams to 10 kilograms (macaws and cockatoos). Extra-large non-parrot birds, such as ostriches and emus, cost $16 a month to insure.

It's fast and easy to get an online premium quote at the VPI Web site. Just type in your zip code, bird's name, age, breed and date you got it, and the site calculates a monthly premium.

Although the site asks for it, the age of a bird does not matter. (When we boosted the age of our test bird by several decades, the premium remained the same - not bad, we thought, for a 60-year-old budgie.)

Overall, bird owners pay slightly less than cat and dog owners - an average of $10 a month compared with $11.29 for a four-year-old canine or feline. Routine checkups and grooming are covered by a separate optional well-care policy that costs another $8.25 a month, the same as for dogs and cats.

How VPI works
The downside to VPI is that it involves just as much red tape as some human insurance policies and is not as flexible.

For instance, the only prescription medication VPI pays for is preventive flea control, not applicable to birds. VPI is quick to point out that it does not cover pre-existing, hereditary or congenital conditions, not so unusual. However, we found it slightly troublesome that representatives of the company could not give us any examples of hereditary or congenital conditions in birds. They said VPI would defer to the veterinarian's opinion.

Instead of reimbursing a certain percentage of your vet bill - say, 80 percent - VPI pays a preset amount for each condition. VPI applies a $50 deductible for each incident and deducts another 10 percent copayment.

For instance, VPI's maximum benefit for conjunctivitis is $200. After the deductible and copayment, your maximum reimbursement would be $135.

To get paid, you have to file a claim form including your doctor's signature and any applicable medical records, and wait for VPI to send a reimbursement check.

A gambling proposition
Like any insurance policy, VPI's is a game of odds. On one hand, a policy could pay off handsomely - say, for example, the budgie you just insured for $7 a month required surgery for pancreatic cancer, which is eligible for $1120 in benefits. At the other extreme, you could pay premiums for years and never recover a cent.

To see how VPI stacks up against the real world of avian medical bills, we decided to test it with four hypothetical situations. We randomly selected four health problems that could afflict a pet bird: a broken blood feather, lead poisoning, constricted toe syndrome, and Psittacine Beak and Feather Disease.

We asked three avian vets to quote treatment fees for each condition. Then we averaged the vets' fees and compared the averages with VPI's reimbursement. (In each case we used VPI's reimbursement for a primary condition, which pays more than a secondary condition.)

In all but one of our four scenarios, VPI shone, covering charges for the condition and then some. The overage didn't completely cover each imaginary vet visit because most vets charge an additional $50 for office time, but it came fairly close.

For our broken blood feather, VPI paid $27 ($80 minus $50 and another $3), compared with our average bill of $15. VPI also covered the diagnosis of PBFD, an untreatable disease, with a payment of $207 ($280 minus $50 and another $39), compared with our average cost of $150.

For our bird with constricted toe syndrome, VPI paid a generous $184.50 ($255 minus $50 and another $20.50), compared with our average fee of $175.

VPI did not completely cover our average charge for lead poisoning ($485), but it did put a dent in it with a benefit of $351 ($440 minus $50 and another $39).

If you're big on frequent checkups for your bird, you might consider adding VPI's $99-a-year well-care policy. It partially covers the hands-on exam, complete blood count, culture, fecal test, parasite treatment and grooming and should pay for itself with one office visit.

Where you could really come out ahead is if you wind up getting these tests done more than once a year. Then you could get up to $189 in well-care benefits, twice as much as the policy costs. It's a pity, although not surprising, that VPI offers well-care only as a rider policy.

Catastrophic shortfall
While it delivered in our test scenarios, VPI is not a panacea. If your bird should suffer a catastrophic illness, you could still wind up with a gut-wrenching vet bill.

The reason: although VPI will reimburse up to $7,000 a year for an insured bird, it caps the payout for one incident at $2,000. In other words, if your bird's illness turns out to be an expensive doozie, you could still get stuck with a big vet bill. Only a series of unrelated serious illnesses or injuries in one year - an unlikely scenario - would allow you to collect the $7,000 maximum.

Take, for example, Lisa Bocchiaro, who spent almost $7,000 in two months trying to cure her African grey Sampson of aspergillosis. The good news is VPI would have paid for a lot more of Sampson's treatment than Bocchiaro thought it would. The $400 amount quoted in VPI's brochure and benefits schedule is for aspergillosis as a primary condition. According to a company rep, VPI would have covered hundreds of dollars more in secondary benefits for such things as Sampson's air sac shunts. Somewhat oddly, difficulty breathing is considered a secondary condition of aspergillosis.

On the downside, Bocchiaro would have been subject to VPI's $2,000 per-incident cap. She still would have had to pay almost $5,000 of the bill herself.

VPI does not mention the per-incident annual cap in its print materials or on its Web site.

Big flocks mean big premiums
Another thing to keep in mind is that while the monthly premiums don't add up to much for one bird, multiple-bird households can quickly generate big VPI bills.

For example, two cockatiels, an Amazon and a macaw would cost over $500 a year to insure (including a modest discount for multiple pets). If you added VPI's well-care policy, the bill would come to over $900 a year for the four birds.

Despite the cost, some multiple-bird owners like the safety net a VPI policy can provide.

Christine Okon, a San Francisco massage therapist, hopes that insuring her birds under VPI will pay off in the long run.

Before getting VPI, Okon and her husband, Bill Selby, endured some hefty vet bills that began when they adopted a cockatiel from a local bird rescue group. The bird, which was found flying free, developed a kidney infection soon after the adoption.

"Alfie appeared chipper at first, but almost immediately showed signs of being sick," said Okon. "Dr. (Lynne) Dustin (of San Francisco Bay Area Bird Hospital) pulled him through." Alfie's vet bill: $2500.

Okon and Selby's green budgie Ralston ran up $407 at the vet's when she became egg-bound.

A year later, one of the four babies Alfie had with his new mate, Tookie, split open her keel after taking a hard fall on the floor. Emergency surgery to repair the injury: $332.

"We thought wow, wish we had insurance," said Okon.

Ralston the egg-bound budgie
Since taking out VPI's avian policy on four of her six cockatiels and three of her four budgies (she dropped coverage on the remaining three after VPI rejected claims on pre-existing conditions), Okon has paid $732.24 a year in premiums. That amount does not include the well-care policy, which would cost almost $700 a year more.

So far, Okon has filed several claims and VPI has partially reimbursed her for some, including one for an infection five of the birds came down with.

However, the biggest reimbursement so far has been only a modest payout for Okon's egg-bound budgie Ralston, who had to have two eggs surgically removed.

Ralston required hospitalization and two followup checkups, totaling $407. After VPI applied the allowed amounts under its benefits schedule and took the $50 deductible and 10 percent copayment, Okon received $141.

It took Okon about a month to get that reimbursement, longer than usual, she says, because VPI did not notify her it needed some additional information. She had to call them to straighten out the matter "or I would still be waiting."

Pleased overall
Despite this claim hassle and the fact that she has paid out hundreds of dollars more than she has gotten back, Okon thinks VPI is worth it.

Chris Okon has insured seven of her birds, including four cockatiels and three budgies, with VPI.

"Owning birds can be very expensive," she said. "If you really want to take care of them you have to bite the bullet and pay those vet bills.

"Unfortunately, there's a lot of mystery or lack of research for many bird conditions. Avian species are not as well researched as mammals. When a doctor is trying to determine a cause there may be lots of tests and they're expensive.

"I would strongly advise anyone with a brand-new bird to get insurance before creating a track record," said Okon. It’s really hard if you adopt a bird that has a pre-existing condition like a kidney ailment."

Okon's only real complaint about VPI is the birthday cards the company sends out to patients. "They have a picture of dogs and cats - no birds," she said wryly.

To insure or not?
The bottom line: VPI is a proven supplier of health insurance for all types of pets, and that alone is good news for bird owners seeking elusive coverage. If your bird needs expensive treatments that VPI reimburses generously, the insurance could save you hundreds of dollars.

On the downside, if your bird suffers a condition that costs thousands of dollars to treat, or VPI decides to exclude a condition on grounds of pre-existence or for another reason, you may find your policy of cold comfort.

What would we do? If we had one bird, especially a small one, we might consider gambling on VPI for $84 a year. After all, a little bird can cost just as much to treat as a big one.

But if we had multiple birds, we would probably pass on VPI. Unlike with humans, insuring a pet's health is not one of life's mandatory expenses. Birds will never need a $100,000 heart transplant or months of rehabilitation after an automobile accident.

Until a wider selection of insurance options for exotics come along, you, too, might want to take the money you would spend on premiums and sock it away in a CD instead. With luck, you'll have the extra cash for those future rainy days in your bird's medical future. With even better luck, the rainy days will never come - and you will still have your money.

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