Does my state force a pet insurer to tell me what it excludes?

In eight jurisdictions, yes. Maine, Louisiana, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida have adopted a pet-specific disclosure statute, Rhode Island has legislation pending, and California has had its own since 2014. Everywhere else there is no pet-specific rule, and what an insurer tells you before you sign is a matter of its own policy rather than of law.

What does the model law actually require?

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners adopted its Pet Insurance Model Act on 13 August 2022. It obliges an insurer to disclose, before the sale, whether the policy excludes coverage for pre-existing conditions, hereditary disorders, congenital anomalies and chronic conditions, and to be clear about waiting periods. A model act binds nobody by itself; it becomes law only where a legislature adopts it, which is why four years later the count is a handful of states rather than fifty.

Why is California the strictest, and why is that surprising?

Because it got there first. Assembly Bill 2056, Chapter 896, was signed in 2014, eight years before the model act existed. It requires disclosure of exactly the four exclusion categories, and it adds something the model does not: a free look cancellation period of not less than 30 days. Penalties run to $5,000 per violation and $10,000 where the violation is wilful.

The reach is unusual too. The statute applies to policies marketed, issued, amended, renewed or delivered to a California resident regardless of where the contract was issued. So a policy written elsewhere still has to meet it if the buyer lives in California.

Why does the industry look so poorly tracked?

Partly because of how the filings are classified. Pet insurance is regulated as a property and casualty line and reported under inland marine, with no financial reporting line of its own, so total premium is hard to see. The electronic filing system has a specific sub-type for pet insurance, 9.0004, but its use is not consistent: Rhode Island files pet policies under inland marine, and Florida files them under livestock. A product filed as livestock is a product that is difficult to count, and difficult to count is difficult to supervise.

What should you do if your state has no statute?

Read the document rather than the page selling it. Everything the model act would have forced an insurer to tell you is in the policy wording already, in the exclusions section and the definitions: whether hereditary and congenital conditions are covered, how long each waiting period runs, and what happens to the second side of the body. That is exactly what this register extracts, with the section number, so that the absence of a disclosure law matters less.

This page describes what the law obliges an insurer to tell you. It does not say whether any policy is a good one, and it is not legal advice. Statutes were read against the NAIC model-law status page and the state citations on 1 September 2026; the Florida citation still needs checking against the session law and its row says so.