Pet Insurance · Coverage

Does Pet Insurance Cover Hip Dysplasia?

Yes: all 11 insurers compared here cover hip dysplasia under an accident-and-illness policy, as long as it is not pre-existing. What differs is the wait before a hip claim can pay: 14 days at Pets Best, ASPCA, Pumpkin, MetLife and Odie; 30 days at Trupanion and Lemonade; six months at Figo; 180 days at Embrace and Fetch; and 12 months at Healthy Paws. Some waits shorten with an orthopedic exam and some depend on your state, so the table below gives each insurer's catch with a link to its own terms.

Which insurers cover hip dysplasia, and how long you wait

Every insurer below covers hip dysplasia under a standard accident-and-illness policy, provided the condition is not pre-existing. The column that matters is the second one.

Checked September 2026 against each insurer's published policy wording and waiver forms (sources below). State law overrides the default in several cases, and insurers revise forms without notice, so treat this as a shortlist and confirm the hip clause directly before you buy. Where a cell says confirm directly, we could not find authoritative published wording and would rather say so than print a number.

The waiting period is the whole decision

For a breed with a known hip risk, the waiting period is not a technicality. It is the product. A 180-day orthopedic exclusion on a Labrador puppy means that for the first six months, any visit where a vet writes down a hip concern can convert the condition from "waiting" to "pre-existing for life." A 14-day wait at another insurer covering the identical condition leaves almost no window for that to happen. (Sources: Embrace, Pets Best.)

For how accident, illness and orthopedic waits work across policies in general, see pet insurance waiting periods.

The spread splits into two tiers. Pets Best, ASPCA, Pumpkin, MetLife and Odie treat hip dysplasia as an ordinary illness and apply their standard wait of about 14 days. Trupanion sits at 30 days with no orthopedic carve-out. At the other end, Embrace and Fetch use 180 days, Figo uses six months for dogs, and Healthy Paws uses a full 12 months for hip dysplasia specifically. Lemonade sits in between at 30 days for orthopedic conditions.

The cruciate mix-up that makes most comparisons wrong

This is the single most common error in pet-insurance comparisons, and it is worth understanding because it changes the answer for two insurers.

Several insurers publish a six-month waiting period that sounds like it covers all orthopedic conditions. Read the definition and it is narrower: at Pets Best and on Odie's main policy form, the six-month wait is defined around a cruciate ligament in the knee. Hip dysplasia is not a knee condition, so it falls back to the ordinary 14-day illness wait. Figo, Embrace and Fetch, by contrast, genuinely do apply their long wait to hips as well. (Sources: Pets Best, Odie, Figo, Embrace, Fetch.)

So "does this insurer have a six-month orthopedic wait" and "does this insurer make me wait six months for a hip" are different questions with different answers. If you are weighing knees rather than hips, our guide on cruciate ligament and ACL coverage works through that side.

Exam waivers, and who actually offers one

Most insurers will shorten an orthopedic wait if your veterinarian examines the dog shortly after the policy starts and signs a form confirming no existing problem. Three designs exist in the market:

• Full waiver. Pets Best, ASPCA and Pumpkin share almost identical mechanics: a full exam from three days before to seven days after the policy start date, documented and signed at the exam, filed within 30 days. Healthy Paws waives its hip wait down to 30 days in 16 states on a clinical exam with no imaging required. Trupanion's exam-day offers waive waiting periods entirely when activated within 24 hours of a vet visit, though not in New York.
• Partial waiver. Fetch waives orthopedic waits for knees only, explicitly not hips. Embrace's much-cited waiver survives in only three states (Kansas, New Mexico, South Carolina); in most others the 180-day exclusion is not waivable. (Sources: Fetch, Embrace.)
• No consumer waiver. Odie waives only through pre-approved channels or proof of prior coverage. MetLife has none published, and largely does not need one.

Every waiver carries the same caveat in near-identical words, and it is the one owners miss: it shortens the waiting period, it does not change the pre-existing exclusion. An exam that happens to find an early hip problem converts that hip from "waiting" into "excluded for life." The waiver is worth doing on a dog with no signs, not as a way to get an existing problem covered.

Bilateral clauses: how one bad hip excludes the other

Hip dysplasia is frequently bilateral, and insurers write clauses for exactly that. Where the clause is active, a problem in one hip before enrollment or during the waiting period makes the other hip pre-existing too, for life. That clause is active and reaches hips at Embrace, Lemonade, ASPCA, Fetch and Odie's main form.

It does not reach hips everywhere. Healthy Paws states that the cruciate ligament is the only bilateral exclusion in its policy. Trupanion and Pumpkin write their bilateral language around knees, patellas and soft tissue rather than hips. Figo and Pets Best define the term but have no operative clause in their current forms, which is worth asking about directly rather than assuming either way.

Pre-existing rules and look-back windows

Two traps compound everything above. First, the look-back: Trupanion applies an unlimited look-back to hip dysplasia, meaning any sign at any point in the dog's past, against the 18 months it uses elsewhere. Odie's main form does something similar by classing hip dysplasia as both chronic and bilateral. (Sources: Trupanion, Odie.)

Second, the curable-condition resets that rescue other conditions do not rescue this one. Embrace's 12-month reset, Pumpkin's 180 days and similar clauses elsewhere are written to exclude ligament, knee and chronic conditions. MetLife states the position most plainly: it lists hip dysplasia and orthopedic conditions among conditions it considers incurable, which will likely not be covered at any point. (Sources: Embrace, Pumpkin, MetLife.)

The practical version: what your vet wrote in the chart before you enrolled matters more than anything on the insurer's marketing page. At most insurers, veterinary advice alone, with no diagnosis and no treatment, is enough to make a condition pre-existing.

Breeds most affected

Hip dysplasia is largely inherited and is most common in large-breed dogs, though it can also affect small-breed dogs and cats. The Orthopedic Foundation for Animals grades hip X-rays that veterinarians send in for screening, and Cornell's Riney Canine Health Center describes it as a common inherited orthopedic condition. (Sources: OFA, Cornell, Merck Veterinary Manual.) Breeds that Cornell, VCA and the AKC name as commonly affected include:

• German Shepherd
• Labrador Retriever, and our full guide to pet insurance for Labradors
• Golden Retriever, and our guide to pet insurance for Golden Retrievers
• Rottweiler and Bulldog
• Saint Bernard and Great Dane
• Old English Sheepdog

A predisposition is not a diagnosis, and a well-bred dog from screened parents can be entirely fine. What the breed list is useful for is timing: if your dog is on it, the waiting-period column above is the one to optimize, and enrolling before any hip is ever mentioned in the record is the single highest-value move available to you.

If your dog is already diagnosed

Be straight with yourself here, because this is where owners waste money. If hip dysplasia is already in your dog's records, essentially no insurer will cover that condition. You can still insure the dog, and coverage will apply to unrelated future problems, which for a young dog is a real amount of risk. What you cannot do is buy a policy expecting the existing hips to be paid for, and several insurers class hip dysplasia as incurable so the symptom-free resets will not open it later either.

Two things are still worth doing. Ask specifically how the insurer treats the unaffected hip, because the bilateral answer varies and one insurer's answer may be materially better than another's. And if you already hold a policy, the free Insurance Checkup walks the five numbers that decide whether it would hold up against an orthopedic surgery year.

Questions people ask

Does pet insurance cover hip dysplasia?
Nearly every major accident-and-illness plan does, as a hereditary condition, provided it is not pre-existing. The difference between insurers is the waiting period, not the coverage.

What is the waiting period for hip dysplasia?
Between 14 days and 12 months depending on the insurer and your state. Pets Best, ASPCA, Pumpkin, MetLife and Odie apply about 14 days; Embrace and Fetch use 180 days; Healthy Paws uses 12 months.

If one hip is already affected, is the other hip covered?
It depends on the bilateral clause. Embrace, Lemonade, ASPCA, Fetch and Odie's main form can exclude the second hip. Healthy Paws, Trupanion and Pumpkin write theirs around knees rather than hips.

Can an exam shorten the wait?
Often yes, and it is usually worth doing on a dog with no signs. But a waiver never changes the pre-existing exclusion, and Fetch's waiver covers knees only, not hips.

Sources

1. Embrace: orthopedic waiting periods and state policy wordings
2. Healthy Paws: hip dysplasia coverage and exclusions
3. Trupanion: hip dysplasia and hereditary condition coverage
4. Figo: sample accident and illness policy (Indiana)
5. Pets Best: hereditary coverage and policy booklet
6. ASPCA Pet Health Insurance: sample accident and illness policy (Alabama)
7. Pumpkin: what pet insurance covers
8. Lemonade: pet insurance waiting periods
9. MetLife Pet: policy and orthopedic conditions
10. MetLife Pet: pre-existing conditions, including incurable conditions
11. Fetch: sample policy wording (GPTM 050)
12. Fetch: What is a waiting period for pet insurance?
13. Odie: sample policy (Trisura, January 2026)
14. Orthopedic Foundation for Animals: Hip Dysplasia
15. Cornell Riney Canine Health Center: Canine hip dysplasia (CHD)
16. Merck Veterinary Manual: Hip Dysplasia in Dogs
17. VCA Animal Hospitals: Hip Dysplasia in Dogs
18. AKC: Hip Dysplasia in Dogs: Signs, Symptoms, Treatment
19. Trupanion: When does my coverage begin?

This is educational information, not insurance or veterinary advice. Insurer details are gathered from public sources and change often, so confirm current terms directly with each insurer. Some links on this site may earn us a commission at no extra cost to you, and it never changes what we write.