u/Denveraunt

I adopted a cat with some muscular and skeletal issues a few years ago. At the time I asked the rescue if there was anything else wrong with her, to which they said no she’s healthy otherwise. She gets bouts of vomiting so a few years ago I took her to the vet for that issue and during examination they said she may have a heart murmur. We did a BNP test which came back fine so we just assumed she was nervous from being at the vet.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago we brought her to the vet for a different issue and the vet said her heart murmur is pretty significant and recommended an EKG, which we scheduled. I submitted the estimate to my insurance and it came back denied saying it was a preexisting condition. I looked over the vet records I had which didn’t mention anything about that. They then told me they contacted the vet he was brought to when he was first found by the rescue, which produced a record that said he had a heart murmur. For reference, the date of this examination which initially found the heart murmur was in between the two dates of different exams the rescue had taken him to. As in, I got a record from 1/16/19 and one from 1/8/19, but the heart murmur was detected on 1/10/19. All these exams were done before I even adopted her, so they obviously knew. Again, the records the rescue provided me with did not say anything about a heart murmur, in fact they both explicitly said the heart was normal. The record that showed the heart murmur was not given to me.
The only reason insurance had this record which was not disclosed was because they reached out to the vet directly.

I really hate to do this because I understand rescues are often short on cash, but I think it’s right that they pay for the diagnostics and treatment of this condition they didn’t initially disclose to me. Is it fair of me to ask this? It’s a lot of money and I cant afford it unless it’s covered by insurance which it will not be. I would have maybe made different decisions including getting treatment for this cat earlier if I had known.

Also, I don’t want to disclose the details, but there are other things that happened that lead me to suspect they knew about this condition and hid it from me. For one, the instagram post saying they found her said she was adopted by the woman whom the rescue told me was just the foster mother.

I adopted a cat with some muscular and skeletal issues a few years ago. At the time I asked the rescue if there was anything else wrong with her, to which they said no she’s healthy otherwise. She gets bouts of vomiting so a few years ago I took her to the vet for that issue and during examination they said she may have a heart murmur. We did a BNP test which came back fine so we just assumed she was nervous from being at the vet.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago we brought her to the vet for a different issue and the vet said her heart murmur is pretty significant and recommended an EKG, which we scheduled. I submitted the estimate to my insurance and it came back denied saying it was a preexisting condition. I looked over the vet records I had which didn’t mention anything about that. They then told me they contacted the vet he was brought to when he was first found by the rescue, which produced a record that said he had a heart murmur. For reference, the date of this examination which initially found the heart murmur was in between the two dates of different exams the rescue had taken him to. As in, I got a record from 1/16/19 and one from 1/8/19, but the heart murmur was detected on 1/10/19. Again, the records the rescue provided me with did not say anything about a heart murmur, in fact they both explicitly said the heart was normal. The record that showed the heart murmur was not given to me.
The only reason insurance had this record which was not disclosed was because they reached out to the vet directly.

I really hate to do this because I understand rescues are often short on cash, but I think it’s right that they pay for the diagnostics and treatment of this condition they didn’t initially disclose to me. Is it fair of me to ask this? It’s a lot of money and I cant afford it unless it’s covered by insurance which it will not be. I would have maybe made different decisions including getting treatment for this cat earlier if I had known.

Also, I don’t want to disclose the details, but there are other things that happened that lead me to suspect they knew about this condition and hid it from me. For one, the instagram post saying they found her said she was adopted by the woman whom the rescue told me was just the foster mother.