Their Pets Got Sick. Then Nationwide Cancelled Their Insurance.
Nationwide collected premiums from one family for fourteen straight years, promised in writing it would “never” drop their dog because of age, and then cancelled the policy three days after the dog was placed on long-term heart and kidney medication.
This is a story about how America’s largest pet insurance company built a loyal customer base on a lifetime promise, watched that base grow older and sicker, and then decided the math no longer worked in their favor. The company chose profits over the people, and the animals, it spent forty years claiming to protect.
A federal class action complaint, filed on June 4, 2025, lays it out with documents, timelines, and social media receipts. Over 100,000 pets lost coverage. Thousands of families were left holding vet bills for conditions Nationwide had been promising to cover since those animals were puppies and kittens.
The Promise They Made. Then Deleted.
Nationwide Sold a Lifetime Guarantee. It Was in Writing.
Nationwide Veterinary Pet Insurance Company has operated since 1982, originally as Veterinary Pet Insurance (VPI), before Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company acquired it in 2009. By 2024, Nationwide marketed itself as the largest pet insurer in the United States, covering 1.2 million animals across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The flagship product at the center of this lawsuit is the “Whole Pet with Wellness Plan.” Nationwide marketed it as the most comprehensive pet insurance available, a nose-to-tail policy covering chronic conditions, cancer treatments, heart disease, kidney disease, arthritis, and more. The company told customers to enroll “as early as possible, before chronic conditions develop,” because doing so locked in coverage before anything could become a pre-existing condition.
The pitch worked. Families signed up when their animals were puppies and kittens, healthy and young, trusting that Nationwide would be there when things got hard. And Nationwide reinforced that trust with one of the most explicit guarantees an insurance company can make.
“Will you drop my pet from coverage because of age? Never. We promise not to drop your pet because of age.”
The Promise Disappeared When It Became Inconvenient
That guarantee lived on Nationwide’s Frequently Asked Questions page. It is no longer there. The complaint notes, with deliberate understatement: “Interestingly, this promise has been deleted from the website.” Nationwide removed the language after the cancellations became public. The company did not replace it with a correction or an explanation. It simply vanished.
Nationwide also told customers on its website: “More coverage for your dog than you’ll find anywhere else.” It called itself a provider of “compassionate care for your pets.” Its corporate slogan was, and remains, “On Your Side.” The complaint documents Nationwide actively encouraging customers to trust it with the long-term health of their animals, framing itself as a financial safety net for pet parents, especially “in times of need.”
Every one of those marketing claims was targeted at the exact type of customer Nationwide eventually dropped: loyal, long-term policyholders whose senior pets had developed the expensive health conditions that made their coverage valuable.
Pet Insurance Industry: Total Premium Volume Growth (2019–2023, North America)
Bait-and-Switch at Industrial Scale
100,000 Animals. Zero Alternatives.
In 2024, Nationwide cancelled the Whole Pet with Wellness Plan for more than 100,000 pets nationwide. The company sent non-renewal notices to policyholders and cited “inflation in the cost of veterinary care and other factors.” Nationwide also stated, officially, that the cancellations were “not associated with the pet’s ages, breed or prior claim history.”
The complaint calls that statement false. Social media told a different story immediately. A Facebook group called “Dropped By Nationwide Pet Insurance Whole Wellness” formed almost immediately after the cancellations, populated by families whose older pets and pets with serious health conditions had their coverage pulled. The complaint documents over a dozen anecdotal accounts from that group, a pattern so clear it reads like a spreadsheet.
The cruelest mechanical detail in this entire scheme: when Nationwide cancelled coverage, policyholders could not simply transfer to a different Nationwide plan at the same terms. Every condition their pet developed under the cancelled Nationwide coverage immediately became a pre-existing condition. Nationwide could legally deny coverage for the exact illnesses it had been insuring. The company had the ability to transfer these customers to comparable plans. The complaint is explicit: it chose not to.
“Nationwide had the ability to transfer all of these Whole Pet policies to a different Nationwide pet insurance policy. It chose profits and deceit over consumer fairness.”
The Pattern Nationwide Said Didn’t Exist
Nationwide told regulators and customers the cancellations had nothing to do with age or health. Every single documented example above contradicts that claim directly. In each case, the sick or older animal lost coverage. The young, healthy animal in the same household kept it.
The Non-Financial Ledger
What Cannot Be Recovered in a Settlement Check
Netti Sternklar started paying Nationwide in 2010. Zoe, their dog, had just been born. For fourteen years, Sternklar paid premiums, even as those premiums “steadily increased” year after year. That is a fourteen-year relationship built on a written promise. When Zoe reached nine years old, just past the age threshold Nationwide used for new policy enrollment, she began showing the signs of a body aging: kidney problems, gallbladder issues, heart complications. Zoe’s vet ordered blood tests, ultrasounds, and placed her on a long-term medication called Ursodiol on May 17, 2024.
Three days later, on May 20, 2024, Nationwide mailed the non-renewal notice. The timing is not a coincidence according to the complaint; it is the mechanism. The company’s own records would have reflected the new diagnosis and medication orders. Sternklar had paid faithfully for fourteen years through every price increase, through Zoe’s healthy years when Nationwide collected premiums and paid out little. The moment the ledger shifted, Nationwide cancelled. Zoe died on or about April 2, 2025. She spent her final months without the coverage her family had been paying for since the day she was born.
Don and Karen Silberman adopted Lucy as an emotional support animal. They enrolled in Nationwide in 2016, when Lucy was four months old, picking Nationwide specifically because of its promises of lifelong coverage. On March 26, 2024, Lucy was diagnosed with Hemangiosarcoma, an aggressive form of cancer, at the age of eight. She underwent surgery, chemotherapy, and multiple scans. Shortly after the long-term care plan was established, Nationwide informed the Silbermans it would not renew Lucy’s policy. Lucy’s surgery, chemotherapy, and scans cost thousands of dollars out of pocket, expenses the Silbermans had been paying premiums for years to avoid.
The deeper betrayal in both of these stories is the trap Nationwide’s cancellation created. Pet insurance for a dog with a cancer diagnosis or chronic kidney and heart disease does not exist in the open market. No insurer covers pre-existing conditions. The Silbermans had no options. Sternklar had no options. The complaint states this plainly: “Consumers who wished to maintain pet insurance were left out in the cold, as pet insurance policies offered by all companies would not cover pre-existing medical conditions and some would not cover certain pets due to age.” Nationwide did not just cancel coverage. Nationwide made it impossible to replace.
Vet Cost Inflation vs. General Consumer Price Index (CPI) — 2022–2024
Legal Receipts
They Said It. It’s in the Filing.
The Cost of a Life Metric
Nationwide’s record annual revenue in 2023, the same period it was cancelling coverage for 100,000 sick and aging pets whose premiums it had collected for years.
$60.3 billion: enough to pay the average American worker’s entire lifetime salary more than 1.2 million times over. The company described itself as “strong and stable” in the same breath it terminated lifelong coverage for a dog on heart medication.
What Americans spent on veterinary care in the most recent reported year, according to the American Pet Products Association. That is the financial exposure Nationwide’s customers faced after losing coverage.
$39.1 billion: more than the annual GDP of over 80 countries. This is the pool of cost that pet insurance exists to manage. Nationwide collected premiums against this risk, then walked away when the claims arrived.
The length of time Netti Sternklar paid Nationwide premiums for Zoe, a dog who started the policy the day she was born and died without coverage after Nationwide cancelled her policy three days after her long-term medication was prescribed.
Fourteen years of monthly premiums. If Sternklar paid even the average dog premium of $612–$749/year, that is between $8,568 ($8,568; roughly five months of rent for a family in a median-priced U.S. city) and $10,486 ($10,486; more than three months of a median household’s take-home pay) paid to a company that cancelled coverage the moment it became necessary.
Societal Impact Mapping
This Hits Hardest at the People Who Can Least Afford It
The complaint cites a 2024 Forbes Advisor poll finding that 63% of dog and cat owners said inflation had made it harder to pay an unexpected vet expense. More troubling: 42% of those surveyed said they would go into debt if a vet bill came in at $999 ($999; a single emergency vet visit that could cover an X-ray, bloodwork, and overnight observation) or less. These are the people who bought pet insurance precisely because they knew they could not absorb a sudden large expense.
Vet costs rose 7.9% between February 2023 and February 2024, more than double the general inflation rate. Over the prior decade, urban veterinary care costs rose nearly 60%. The pet insurance market grew directly in response to this pressure, with the number of insured pets growing at an average annual rate of 20% since 2020. The average annual premium for dogs climbed from $612 ($612; more than two months of groceries for many households) in 2020 to $749 ($749; the equivalent of a month of car payments for many working families) in 2024. Nationwide raised those premiums “steadily” even as it was planning to exit the coverage entirely.
When Nationwide cancelled, affected policyholders faced two simultaneous economic shocks: the full cost of veterinary care for a sick, elderly animal with no insurance coverage, and the complete elimination of their ability to obtain replacement coverage. No insurer covers pre-existing conditions. The financial exposure was not hypothetical. The Silbermans paid “thousands of dollars out of pocket” for Lucy’s cancer surgery and chemotherapy after cancellation. Sternklar paid “thousands of dollars out of pocket” for Zoe’s ongoing kidney, gallbladder, and heart monitoring. These are not wealthy families with disposable vet budgets. These are people who bought insurance specifically to avoid exactly this outcome.
The broader market context makes Nationwide’s decision more calculated, not less. According to the complaint, the pet insurance market was valued at $4.99 billion in 2024 ($4.99 billion; enough to fund the annual operating budgets of several mid-sized U.S. cities simultaneously) and is projected to reach $15.87 billion ($15.87 billion; more than the entire annual GDP of some nations) by 2030. Nationwide did not exit a struggling market. It exited the least profitable segment of a booming one. It shed the customers who had aged into the expensive phase of coverage, and it kept collecting premiums from healthy young animals. That is not an insurance company struggling to survive. That is an insurance company optimizing profit by extracting value from loyal customers and discarding them at peak vulnerability.
“91% of pet owners have endured some level of financial stress because of pet care costs.” Then the company they trusted to protect them cancelled their policies the moment their pets got sick.
When You Can’t Afford the Vet, Pets Die. That Has Human Costs Too.
The complaint does not frame this as a public health issue directly, but the data it presents makes the connection unavoidable. A significant share of pet owners in America today cannot absorb a moderate unexpected vet expense without going into debt. Pet insurance exists to bridge that gap. When coverage disappears for animals already on long-term medication or cancer treatment, the immediate consequence is a family forced to decide between debt and an animal’s life.
The complaint specifically mentions that rising costs and the fear of being unable to afford end-of-life care pushes people into the pet insurance market to “avoid a potential future situation where a pet owner is forced to put a beloved pet to sleep because of unaffordable veterinary care costs.” Nationwide’s cancellation policy created precisely that situation for thousands of families. Pets like Zoe, already managing kidney and heart disease, faced the prospect of discontinued monitoring and medication if their families could not absorb the uncovered costs. Zoe died on April 2, 2025. The complaint does not say whether adequate coverage would have changed that outcome. It does say that the family paid for that coverage for fourteen years expecting they would never have to make that calculus.
Emotional support animals represent a separate, underexamined dimension of this harm. The Silbermans adopted Lucy specifically as an emotional support animal. The psychological and therapeutic function of an emotional support animal is not metaphorical; it is clinical. The financial and emotional stress of managing an uninsured cancer diagnosis in a support animal, an animal that provides a measurable mental health function, compounds harm beyond ordinary pet loss. The complaint does not quantify this. No settlement can.
Average Annual Dog Insurance Premium Growth: 2020 vs. 2024
What Now?
Who’s Responsible. Who’s Watching. What You Can Do.
The following corporate entities are named defendants in the federal class action:
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