Key Takeaway
- Veterinary cost inflation is already suppressing visit frequency and causing owners to decline care. Conditions that make the enrollment case for pet insurance stronger in theory but harder to close in practice, because the owners most likely to skip care are also the least likely to afford the premiums that have risen 20.8% industry-wide in gross written terms since 2023.
The AVMA’s Convention Program Is a Claims-Frequency Signal
The 2026 AVMA Convention opens Thursday in Anaheim with a program that has quietly become a leading indicator for pet insurance underwriters. According to a dvm360 analysis published this week, sessions on cost, affordability, access, and the spectrum of care more than doubled between the 2025 and 2026 programs, rising from 11 sessions to 24. The AVMA also built a new named block called the “Reducing Barriers to Care Symposium,” with seven sessions on July 13, with no equivalent in last year’s program.
This isn’t an abstract professional trend. The session mix at the country’s largest annual veterinary conference tracks what the profession is worried about and, by extension, what’s happening to patient volume and claim frequency. When the AVMA dedicates a named symposium to helping veterinarians deliver care within their clients’ budgets, that’s the profession acknowledging that the status quo is failing a measurable share of patients.
The numbers behind that acknowledgment are concrete. A PetSmart Charities-Gallup study found that 94% of practicing veterinarians say clients’ financial considerations at least sometimes limit their ability to provide recommended care. A companion survey of pet owners found 52% had skipped or declined needed veterinary care in the past year. Veterinary patient visits fell roughly 3% in 2025, according to Brakke Consulting’s annual assessment presented January 19 at NAVC’s VMX conference in Orlando. It was the fourth consecutive year of declining volume. Revenue at practices still grew about 2.5%, but only because prices went up, not because more pets were seen.
Vetsource’s 2026 white paper put a finer number on it: veterinary practices raised service prices an average of 6.57% from 2024 to 2025, while revenue grew only 5.4%. The gap between those two figures is patients lost to cost.
What This Means for Pet Insurance Enrollment and Claims
For pet insurance carriers and their underwriters, the divergence between rising veterinary prices and falling visit volume creates a structural problem on both sides of the ledger.
On the claims side, delayed care tends to produce more severe claims when animals finally reach treatment. Owners who stretch the intervals between visits or decline recommended diagnostics don’t prevent conditions from progressing. They front-load the cost into a single emergency or late-stage treatment event rather than a routine one. This pattern raises average claim severity without necessarily reducing claim frequency for insured animals.
On the enrollment side, the population most deterred by rising veterinary costs is the same population least likely to add a monthly premium. NAHIA’s 2026 State of the Industry Report, released June 24, showed gross written premiums for U.S. pet insurance climbed 20.8% to $5.2 billion. The number of insured pets reached 7.6 million. Only 4.27% of U.S. pets carry coverage, and the premium growth rate outpaced the increase in policy count. Average premiums are rising faster than the insured base is growing. For the 95.73% of pets that remain uninsured, the enrollment friction just got higher.
Most pet insurance brands aren’t insurance carriers. They’re distribution-layer products on top of about 12 actual underwriters. Pumpkin and Spot are underwritten by United States Fire Insurance, a Fairfax subsidiary. ASPCA Pet Insurance is administered by Crum & Forster Pet Insurance Group, also of Fairfax. Pets Best now issues new business through MS Transverse Insurance Company, with existing policies running through Independence American Insurance Company and American Pet Insurance Company paper. Trupanion underwrites its own policies. The brands on the marketing sites are distribution channels; the underwriters are the ones who decide whether rising claims severity triggers rate filings.
Florida’s Office of Insurance Regulation approved 12 pet insurance rate increases averaging 9.25% in late 2025, with one carrier receiving approval for a 26% overall increase, according to the NAPHIA 2026 report. This is what premium growth outpacing policy count looks like from the inside: the existing insured base is paying more, partly because claim costs are rising, and partly because a declining-visit-frequency market produces a sicker insured pool relative to the overall pet population.
The standard waiting period structure doesn’t change this math. Most carriers impose 14 days for accidents, 14 to 30 days for illness, and six months to a year for orthopedic conditions, including cruciate ligament tears, hip dysplasia, and IVDD. An owner who delays a vet visit because of cost, watches a limping dog for three weeks, then buys insurance will find that the orthopedic waiting period runs 6 to 12 months from enrollment. If a diagnosis comes before that waiting period closes, the condition becomes pre-existing to most carriers and is excluded from coverage for the life of the policy.
Pre-existing condition handling varies across the industry in ways that matter here. Embrace’s curable-condition policy treats a resolved condition as no longer pre-existing after 12 symptom-free months. Health Paws applies a lifetime exclusion to conditions that were symptomatic before the policy’s effective date, regardless of whether the condition was later treated and resolved. Owners who delayed care and then enrolled during or after treatment may face very different outcomes depending on which underwriter is behind the brand they chose.
The AVMA’s July 13 symposium, titled “From Insight to Impact: Delivering Accessible Care in Everyday Practice,” is aimed at teaching veterinarians how to work within the financial constraints pet owners have. Behavioral economics, spectrum-of-care frameworks, and practical scripts for declining-care conversations are all on the program. That curriculum reflects where the profession has arrived after four consecutive years of price increases outrunning consumer willingness to pay, per the Brakke Consulting data.
For pet owners currently shopping for coverage, the veterinary affordability data cuts both ways. Rising prices and declining visit frequency make the enrollment case real: one emergency or specialist visit can run $3,000 to $8,000, and that math is unchanged by whether routine visits declined. But the premium trajectory is also real. Rate escalation as pets age runs 10 to 30% annually at most carriers, separate from any inflation adjustment. A $40 monthly premium for a two-year-old dog often reaches $80 to $120 by age eight, compounding on top of any carrier-level rate filings driven by exactly the kind of claims inflation the profession is now building entire conference symposia around.
You can review current policy structures and underwriting relationships across the major carriers in our best pet insurance guide before enrollment. If you own a dog specifically, the breed-specific claim profiles and waiting period structures for orthopedic conditions matter enough that the details are worth comparing in our guide of the best pet insurance for dogs.
The AVMA’s program shift doesn’t mean the veterinary profession has solved the affordability problem. It means the profession has started teaching veterinarians to practice around it. Pet insurance underwriters are already getting the bill.
