The cost of vets

orlao

frivolous_fay wrote: »

Out of interest, what drugs can be claimed for on pet insurance?

AFAIK whatever your vet prescribes with the exception of flea treatments and wormers.

orlao

[quote=elsien;12484785 I have a lot of consultations just for check ups for various things.
My nice vet also sometimes waives the cost when he thinks he's seen rather too much of us on a short space of time![/quote]

Which from your point of view is great but.......if a vet practice is subsidising consultation costs with med sales it means that another pet owner is paying OTT for their regular meds when their animal might only see the vet for a 6 monthly "prescription check up"?

None of this is aimed at any particular vet or practice btw.....it's just that to me it's an odd way to run a business and then some vets take it very badly when their customers then exercise their right (for want of a better word!) to source meds a lot cheaper elsewhere. That must leave them out of pocket and very few businesses can afford that longterm?

MrsTinks

Or be best mates with your vet and have doggy play dates :rotfl:
No seriously - we've looked at her plans for setting up a surgery and it is a HUGE financial undertaking. Then you have the ungodly hours and weekends on call... I don't begrudge them the money - sure I'll buy it cheaper online if I can, but I'd never scrimp on prescription drugs if they were needed. My mate lives 20+ mins away so we still use the local vet (rather a lot... blooming accident prone pooch!) for accute stuff. Everything else my mate does for me which is lucky
However I much I'd love to be a vet... I'm not sure I could put up with it. You might think they charge a lot, but there are other things to pay for too - sure they make money, but 99.9% of the time they work for it!

pboae

Simon_P wrote: »

Personally i wouldn't be entirely happy if it were my dog. I'd insist they hand over MY prescription on request & if i feel my dog needs a battery of tests in the mean time i'll be in touch.

Personally I would be far more concerned if a vet was willing to hand out repeat prescriptions for NSAIDs without doing liver and kidney tests.

Just because a dog is old or infirm, it doesn't absolve a vet from the responsibility of ensuring that the pain relief they have prescribed isn't going to kill them.

Regarding the OPs question, my dog is insured so it doesn't personally affect me. But I would rather they marked up the meds as well. The vets have their service, overheads and profit margins to cover, they have to make that one way or another. At the moment it works out cheaper to buy meds online because few people bother to do it, so the ones that do are being subsidised by the rest.

If it becomes widespread then vets will have to increase other charges in order to make up the difference, so the overall cost will remain roughly the same. In fact it could end up being cheaper to buy from the vets, as adding a second company in with their own profit margin to consider, might just bump the overall price up in the end.

snowman2_2

Under current prescription law, any Prescription Only Medicine (POM-V) must be prescribed by a vet with current and recent responsibility for the animal or group of animals in question. Current interpretation of this law by most vets is that an examination is needed every 3 - 4 months. It is not legal for us just to write a prescription or give out drugs endlessly without checking your pet, nor is it good practice for the animals health. As a vet, if I break this law, I can be struck off and lose my livelihood, fined or even imprisoned.

Personally i wouldn't be entirely happy if it were my dog. I'd insist they hand over MY prescription on request & if i feel my dog needs a battery of tests in the mean time i'll be in touch.

Personally, I wouldn't be happy at being struck off, fined or imprisoned just to please an owner. This is my career but also UK law, we are not just trying it on. Saying that, any decent vet should be able to justify any tests that they are running and with Metacam we need to keep a check on kidney function. If your vet can't justify a test, go elsewhere. I can always justify any tests that I perform, I don't do any just for the sake of it. Transparency is a good virtue and this blunt Yorkshireman has a thriving practice because of transparency.

As for pet insurance, we always advise a lifetime policy. If people keep buying cheap insurance policies that only pay out for 12 months, there are lots of chronic conditions that we can control for years that you are going to get stuck paying for yourself. False economy and so many people get caught out. Get a decent lifetime policy, find a good vet who is straight with you, justifies their actions and develop a good relationship with them. With a good insurance policy you get the best of care and can plan for the costs. Some long term conditions include skin disease, arthritis, thyroid problems, heart disease, kidney disease - I have been involved with cases of all of those today.

orlao

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Prescription Charges

You may already be aware but from the 30th October your vet will be able to charge your for prescriptions again. The Office of Fair Trading ruled in 2005 that veterinary practices had a monopoly on the market and put in a ruling which allowed the consumers more choice. This ruling will be expiring in October unfortunately.
[/FONT][/FONT][/FONT]Although your vet can charge any fee they wish, it is expected that they will charge approx £15 per prescription. Of course, it's unlikely to be economical to gain a one month supply but again, the vet can write the prescription for 6 months, in which case savings can usually be made.

This is from an email that petmeds sent yesterday which I personally feel that if vets do this it will be a bit cheeky.......I also wonder if it will be strictly legal? Surely it does not cost £15 to print off and sign a prescription and if you've had a consultation you've already paid for your vets professional skills and practice costs....so issuing the prescription becomes an admin matter. I'm thinking along the bank and credit cards charges line, that they're only allowed to charge their costs and not a penalty and TBH a £15 charge would begin to feel like a penalty for not buying through them?

I'm not sure that i'm on the right lines here but maybe you can see where I'm coming from????

orlao

snowman2 wrote: »

Under current prescription law, any Prescription Only Medicine (POM-V) must be prescribed by a vet with current and recent responsibility for the animal or group of animals in question. Quite understand this and agree with the policy totally:D
As for pet insurance, we always advise a lifetime policy. If people keep buying cheap insurance policies that only pay out for 12 months, there are lots of chronic conditions that we can control for years that you are going to get stuck paying for yourself. False economy and so many people get caught out. Get a decent lifetime policy, find a good vet who is straight with you, justifies their actions and develop a good relationship with them. With a good insurance policy you get the best of care and can plan for the costs. Some long term conditions include skin disease, arthritis, thyroid problems, heart disease, kidney disease - I have been involved with cases of all of those today.

Sadly for a lot of people as their animals age they don't have the option realistically of getting good affordable cover. 10-15 years ago when most of my animals were young the availability and knowledge about pet insurance was less widespread than now.

Horse insurance policies still only pay out for 12 months even the "best" ones like NFU and petplan AFAIK so while, until recently my horses have had full vet cover I'm not going to renew it on the younger horse. I don't have the option of full vet cover on the 17 year old as I bought him at 16 years so no company I tried was prepared to cover him without a minimum of 50% excess and a premium that was approaching £1k p.a:eek: TBH, the younger horse has so many mental issues that it would not be in his interest to put him through major surgery and the recovery period of box rest etc so I've already decided that if something serious was wrong with him he will be PTS. My vet agrees with me on this issue.....his opinion is that that it CAN be selfish to keep an animal alive for no other reason than you don't want to make a very hard decision. The older pony will again have major treatment dependant on quality of life afterwards but at least with him you only have to decide on a lifelong basis rather than "could he cope with the cure" if you see what I mean. The point of that ramble:o is that I'm now heading towards more self insurance of my pets rather than insuring at all costs despite an expensive couple of years.....maybe because I've always ended up with more animals than any sensible person should have and by putting the equivalent of 6 :eek: at one point house pets insurance aside I've always ended up in pocket over many years despite the dogs legs costing me £4k last year and the cat having hyperthroidism.

For instance the dog is 4 1/2 now and as a pup I was quoted £33 a month by pet plan for him......yes his legs would got me that money back but the terriers have cost me very little in vets bills in 15 years and (guessing!) their premiums would have been £20 a month combined for say 11 years ( youngest JRT) plus one cat of three with a longterm condition in 15 years.....factor in excesses and I reckon I win financially longterm. In saying that, I'm lucky enough to have access to credit to, if nesessary pay a large bill......but I know a lot of people who when times are tough, the insurance is the 1st thing to go, compared to paying the morgage, CT and food it might not be a priority.......

Difficult call but I'm not always a fan of insuring, pros and cons to everything I suppose

snowman2_2

According to the office of fair trading, the average vet price for a written prescription in 2005 was £5.24. A far cry from the £15 that PetMeds are throwing about. To be honest, they (internet pharmacies) are the only people suggesting a price. The vet organisations are being very careful not to mention a price for fear of being called a cartel and colluding. There are 2 arguments that I have seen, one is to match the price to an NHS prescription price (£7.10 currently) and the second (slightly flippant) argument is to match the Veterinary Medicines Directorate charge for a licence to import drugs from outside the UK. This is £15 which is probably where PetMeds is coming in. I suspect the average fee will be between the old £5.24 and the NHS £7.10.

Of course it is in the interests of the internet pharmacies to have free prescriptions. Even £5.24 can negate their advantages in the pricing. From a vets point of view, why should we give our time for free? It probably takes 4 -5 minutes to check, write and sign a prescription and at the moment we are giving our time for free to support internet pharmacies. Personally I like the idea of matching the NHS price. On a related note, doctors can charge for writing a prescription for anti-malaria drugs. The average price that I could find on the internet was between £10 and £15. How about vets match these?

snowman2_2

orlao wrote: »

Difficult call but I'm not always a fan of insuring, pros and cons to everything I suppose

My basic point was that if you were going to get an insurance policy, get a decent one, don't just get the cheapest as it may not be the best for you and your pet

Asher

This place is reasonable
http://www.inhousepharmacy.com/pet-care/pet-care.html

They also sell other drugs/medicine so if you know what you want you can get it from there.

Also if you buy from the USA many items are available without a prescription for people such as farmers but you need to tick a disclaimer because they are not giving advice and assume you know what you are buying and how to use it. You would have to pay a customs charge for any place you import medicine from plus a post office handling charge.