Financial Assistance with Vet Bills

With Brinkley's surgery all said and done I was collecting up vet bills to send off the the insurance carrier and got to thinking how does the average person cover this type of expense? Personally, I have a credit card with a $10,000 limit I never use. I consider it my emergency card, so if I didn't have pet insurance to reimburse the costs of much of her surgery I guess I would just slowly make credit card payments until I got it paid off. Many people with pets don't have that option. Either they don't qualify for higher limit credit cards, don't have pet insurance or a savings account to cover these types of expenses.  I mean, we literally have spent $3800+ dollars on this ordeal. After the pet insurance reimbursed us we were only down about $1000, but for some familys that's a devestating amount. Ironically I saw a post/page out of The American Dog Magazine (check them out, they’re awesome!) about financial assistance with vet bills.  Here is the page from their most recent publication, the Winter 2012/2013 magazine outlining different options for obtaining financial assistance. 

 
Tell us what you think?  What's your plan to cover emergency vet bills that come up or do you have a plan in place at all?