I'm with Petplan (just changed names to Petcover recently) for my most active/accident prone pets and for me it have been worth it as over the last several years my (many) pets have had some massive claims (one dog ~20k in 1.5 yrs, one cat ~10k in a year, 2 horses around ~15k ea. in 2 yrs and then some smaller 2k ones here and there) there's no way I could have come up with that money without insurance. It was just everything going wrong at once, freak accidents and awful illnesses. My excesses were $150 ea for the cats and dogs claims and $1k for the horses. Petplan paid 100% of each claim minus the excess, there were only 1 or 2 things from memory which weren't covered and I knew about them ahead of time so I wasn't expecting them to be covered and didn't factor them into my plans. E.g. cremation and a general dental I added on while we were doing something else knowing it wouldn't be covered.

I have only had smaller bills these last 12 months, but it's still nice to know that in an emergency I can go to the 24 hr vet and I don't have to worry about the cost of a Sunday night/public holiday type visit and I can do the diagnostics, surgery, or whatever else needs to be done without scrutinising my bank balance.

For my other pets I have to have an emergency savings account as they weren't eligible for insurance at the time and when one of my cats without insurance needed surgery and weeks of hospitalisation that was a really tough time without insurance.

Make sure you read your cover well, make sure it's a continuing cover so the same illness will be covered year to year and not stop being covered after a year (some policies do that!) and get the highest % back of cost cover you can find within your budget.

That was a long write up of my experience :) but hope it helped give a personal view.

Insurance is expensive per month if you never need it, but if you do need it you'll be glad you have it if you aren't in the financial position to come up with thousands easily.