Vet asking me to sign for unlimited financial liability ahead of routine op

bglamb

emmajones1976 said:

You arent going to rack up £10k in a few hours though, unless you plan on being uncontactable for ages.

Well, first off I have no idea what the bill could be, because they refused to put a limit on it. And I don't know if I would even want to pay £5k. The op was £50.

And in defence of all these kinds of arguments that they kept coming out with, I replied "So then don't make me sign it."

But someone has to take that liability, and they weren't willing to do it, so I don't know why they would expect me to.

If it's a 1 in a million chance, and it won't cost that much anyway, they could just take the liability, or ask me to sign up to 1k or 10k or something. Likewise, they could put in the contract "We'll always try and call you first", but they didn't.

Signing a contract like this with someone who insists that you sign it and refuses to water it down to reasonable language, whilst simultaneously trying to convince you that they'll never enforce it to the letter is really dodgy.

tacpot12

My comment that you should really have the pet insured was based on me assuming that an expected bill of a few thousand pounds would be a problem for you. I've recently had a bill for £1500 for our elderly cat who started having seizures, and was very pleased that PetPlan were paying 80% of this bill. 

If you can afford to self-insure, I would agree that this is the most cost-effective method - as you say, Insurers wouldn't be in the business if they didn't make money from it. 

Undervalued

bglamb said:

Undervalued said:
In a medical emergency there may not be time to call you first. What would you say if the vet said to you "sorry your cat died, we could probably have saved it but you weren't answering your phone to give the go ahead"?

Exactly, and this is one of the things that I asked when they said they would always seek my consent first.

I said I'd be happy to authorise a payment in advance up to a particular amount. Or to pay a set amount up-front to them as insurance on that one operation. Or to say "I have insurance up to £10,000", or something. There's lots of solutions, but they wanted a blank cheque.

If the cat needs life-saving treatment that costs x, and x is more than my insurance, or more than I can afford, and they can't get me on the phone, then I don't want them to do it, obviously. Everyone has a limit!

You could just as easily ask "How would you feel if they called you up and said that they did life-saving treatment that cost more than you could possibly ever afford and was above your insurance limit?"

There is no real answer to this.

If you set a limit of, say, £1000, and the necessary procedure costs £1100. They can't reach you on the phone so then what?

Or, more commonly, you spend say £800 then a further £400 procedure is needed, with a good chance of success. If your £1000 was a hard limit then your only options are accept that the £800 was wasted or spend the rest and find an extra £200 over budget.

You mention insurance but in my (limited) experience there can be situations where it is not possible to get an yes or no quickly enough from the insurer. As I understand it most / all vets will insist on the pet owner agreeing to pay if, for any reason, the insurer won't. The vet may well be willing to help the owner with evidence if the insurer is being difficult but ultimately it is the owner's problem.

bglamb

Undervalued said:

bglamb said:

Undervalued said:
In a medical emergency there may not be time to call you first. What would you say if the vet said to you "sorry your cat died, we could probably have saved it but you weren't answering your phone to give the go ahead"?

Exactly, and this is one of the things that I asked when they said they would always seek my consent first.

I said I'd be happy to authorise a payment in advance up to a particular amount. Or to pay a set amount up-front to them as insurance on that one operation. Or to say "I have insurance up to £10,000", or something. There's lots of solutions, but they wanted a blank cheque.

If the cat needs life-saving treatment that costs x, and x is more than my insurance, or more than I can afford, and they can't get me on the phone, then I don't want them to do it, obviously. Everyone has a limit!

You could just as easily ask "How would you feel if they called you up and said that they did life-saving treatment that cost more than you could possibly ever afford and was above your insurance limit?"

There is no real answer to this.

If you set a limit of, say, £1000, and the necessary procedure costs £1100. They can't reach you on the phone so then what?

Or, more commonly, you spend say £800 then a further £400 procedure is needed, with a good chance of success. If your £1000 was a hard limit then your only options are accept that the £800 was wasted or spend the rest and find an extra £200 over budget.

You mention insurance but in my (limited) experience there can be situations where it is not possible to get an yes or no quickly enough from the insurer. As I understand it most / all vets will insist on the pet owner agreeing to pay if, for any reason, the insurer won't. The vet may well be willing to help the owner with evidence if the insurer is being difficult but ultimately it is the owner's problem.

The answer's pretty simple. I'd set a limit that I was genuinely happy with. If I said "Don't spend more than x" and it was x+1, then I wouldn't want them to do it. That's not rocket science.

Or the other answer is that the vet themselves just add £10 on to every op and use it to cover the emergencies.

To be honest, even if they said "There is no operation on our books over 10k, so just sign up to that" I would have been ok, because at that point I might have had an empty savings account, but I wouldn't have had to sell my house.

And sure it's awkward if they spend £x, then the kitten needs *another* procedure, but again this isn't about 'value for money', it's about there being a finite limit to the money in my bank account. If I spend all my money on the first op, then it doesn't matter if it needs another one. I de-facto can't afford it.

It would be pretty unlikely for this situation to occur though, for a whole host of reasons. Firstly, there is almost no chance of complications on a routine op like this. Secondly, you can set a nice high limit, like £10k (which I could insure against), and these hypothetical edge cases would only come up in the instances where the required costs were something like £10,100, which is vanishingly unlikely.

And in any case, if it was really something stupid like £10,001 then I would expect the Vet to just do the op and suck it up at that point. Or just ask nicely for the extra £1 afterwards and accept that maybe I don't have it.

I get what you're saying, but the solution of "Just write them a blank cheque to use at their discretion" is clearly *not* the only (or best) solution here.

I'd take a dead kitten over not being able to afford to feed my child any day.

sheramber

Ni insurance will  cover  you for neutering or anything connected to it.

My vet has a fixed price for an op. So some will pay more than needed and some will pay less. It must work for them.

SaintJudy

I would never go to Vets4Pets. I'm sure some of the individual vets are very good but I always prefer a going to a practice that I can start to build a relationship with

Undervalued

bglamb said:

Undervalued said:

bglamb said:

Undervalued said:
In a medical emergency there may not be time to call you first. What would you say if the vet said to you "sorry your cat died, we could probably have saved it but you weren't answering your phone to give the go ahead"?

Exactly, and this is one of the things that I asked when they said they would always seek my consent first.

I said I'd be happy to authorise a payment in advance up to a particular amount. Or to pay a set amount up-front to them as insurance on that one operation. Or to say "I have insurance up to £10,000", or something. There's lots of solutions, but they wanted a blank cheque.

If the cat needs life-saving treatment that costs x, and x is more than my insurance, or more than I can afford, and they can't get me on the phone, then I don't want them to do it, obviously. Everyone has a limit!

You could just as easily ask "How would you feel if they called you up and said that they did life-saving treatment that cost more than you could possibly ever afford and was above your insurance limit?"

There is no real answer to this.

If you set a limit of, say, £1000, and the necessary procedure costs £1100. They can't reach you on the phone so then what?

Or, more commonly, you spend say £800 then a further £400 procedure is needed, with a good chance of success. If your £1000 was a hard limit then your only options are accept that the £800 was wasted or spend the rest and find an extra £200 over budget.

You mention insurance but in my (limited) experience there can be situations where it is not possible to get an yes or no quickly enough from the insurer. As I understand it most / all vets will insist on the pet owner agreeing to pay if, for any reason, the insurer won't. The vet may well be willing to help the owner with evidence if the insurer is being difficult but ultimately it is the owner's problem.

The answer's pretty simple. I'd set a limit that I was genuinely happy with. If I said "Don't spend more than x" and it was x+1, then I wouldn't want them to do it. That's not rocket science.

Or the other answer is that the vet themselves just add £10 on to every op and use it to cover the emergencies.

To be honest, even if they said "There is no operation on our books over 10k, so just sign up to that" I would have been ok, because at that point I might have had an empty savings account, but I wouldn't have had to sell my house.

And sure it's awkward if they spend £x, then the kitten needs *another* procedure, but again this isn't about 'value for money', it's about there being a finite limit to the money in my bank account. If I spend all my money on the first op, then it doesn't matter if it needs another one. I de-facto can't afford it.

It would be pretty unlikely for this situation to occur though, for a whole host of reasons. Firstly, there is almost no chance of complications on a routine op like this. Secondly, you can set a nice high limit, like £10k (which I could insure against), and these hypothetical edge cases would only come up in the instances where the required costs were something like £10,100, which is vanishingly unlikely.

And in any case, if it was really something stupid like £10,001 then I would expect the Vet to just do the op and suck it up at that point. Or just ask nicely for the extra £1 afterwards and accept that maybe I don't have it.

I get what you're saying, but the solution of "Just write them a blank cheque to use at their discretion" is clearly *not* the only (or best) solution here.

I'd take a dead kitten over not being able to afford to feed my child any day.

I don't think the answer is simple at all and indeed your penultimate paragraph rather confirms that. If the total is just a little over your limit you seem to expect the vet to effectively round it down if you can't or won't pay the extra.

OK this is only really relevant if an urgent decision is needed and you can't be contacted.

Your second paragraph is an interesting suggestion and I suspect, in reality, this happens to a limited extent particularly in smaller practices. However they have to make a living and draw the line somewhere.

Given the length of training to become a vet they really do not earn a great deal compared with people with similar academic qualifications in human medicine or many other professions.

bglamb

Undervalued said:

bglamb said:

Undervalued said:

bglamb said:

Undervalued said:
In a medical emergency there may not be time to call you first. What would you say if the vet said to you "sorry your cat died, we could probably have saved it but you weren't answering your phone to give the go ahead"?

Exactly, and this is one of the things that I asked when they said they would always seek my consent first.

I said I'd be happy to authorise a payment in advance up to a particular amount. Or to pay a set amount up-front to them as insurance on that one operation. Or to say "I have insurance up to £10,000", or something. There's lots of solutions, but they wanted a blank cheque.

If the cat needs life-saving treatment that costs x, and x is more than my insurance, or more than I can afford, and they can't get me on the phone, then I don't want them to do it, obviously. Everyone has a limit!

You could just as easily ask "How would you feel if they called you up and said that they did life-saving treatment that cost more than you could possibly ever afford and was above your insurance limit?"

There is no real answer to this.

If you set a limit of, say, £1000, and the necessary procedure costs £1100. They can't reach you on the phone so then what?

Or, more commonly, you spend say £800 then a further £400 procedure is needed, with a good chance of success. If your £1000 was a hard limit then your only options are accept that the £800 was wasted or spend the rest and find an extra £200 over budget.

You mention insurance but in my (limited) experience there can be situations where it is not possible to get an yes or no quickly enough from the insurer. As I understand it most / all vets will insist on the pet owner agreeing to pay if, for any reason, the insurer won't. The vet may well be willing to help the owner with evidence if the insurer is being difficult but ultimately it is the owner's problem.

The answer's pretty simple. I'd set a limit that I was genuinely happy with. If I said "Don't spend more than x" and it was x+1, then I wouldn't want them to do it. That's not rocket science.

Or the other answer is that the vet themselves just add £10 on to every op and use it to cover the emergencies.

To be honest, even if they said "There is no operation on our books over 10k, so just sign up to that" I would have been ok, because at that point I might have had an empty savings account, but I wouldn't have had to sell my house.

And sure it's awkward if they spend £x, then the kitten needs *another* procedure, but again this isn't about 'value for money', it's about there being a finite limit to the money in my bank account. If I spend all my money on the first op, then it doesn't matter if it needs another one. I de-facto can't afford it.

It would be pretty unlikely for this situation to occur though, for a whole host of reasons. Firstly, there is almost no chance of complications on a routine op like this. Secondly, you can set a nice high limit, like £10k (which I could insure against), and these hypothetical edge cases would only come up in the instances where the required costs were something like £10,100, which is vanishingly unlikely.

And in any case, if it was really something stupid like £10,001 then I would expect the Vet to just do the op and suck it up at that point. Or just ask nicely for the extra £1 afterwards and accept that maybe I don't have it.

I get what you're saying, but the solution of "Just write them a blank cheque to use at their discretion" is clearly *not* the only (or best) solution here.

I'd take a dead kitten over not being able to afford to feed my child any day.

I don't think the answer is simple at all and indeed your penultimate paragraph rather confirms that. If the total is just a little over your limit you seem to expect the vet to effectively round it down if you can't or won't pay the extra.

OK this is only really relevant if an urgent decision is needed and you can't be contacted.

Your second paragraph is an interesting suggestion and I suspect, in reality, this happens to a limited extent particularly in smaller practices. However they have to make a living and draw the line somewhere.

Given the length of training to become a vet they really do not earn a great deal compared with people with similar academic qualifications in human medicine or many other professions.

Well, no, as I said in my first paragraph, if it was x+1, then I would be happy not paying it.

The whole point of choosing a limit like this is that it's right at the margin of what you are both happy and unhappy to pay, so it's kinda lose/lose at that point.

If the vet called me up and said "It was small but relevant amount over £10k, so we didn't do it", I would be very grateful, as I wouldn't want to pay *meaningfully* more than that (for example).

The penultimate paragraph was just in relation to the idea of a *teeny tiny* increase over that limit, and to highlight how ridiculous it would be in practice. No vet would say "Well the treatment would be £10,001, and we could only claim £10,000 off the customer, so we'll just do nothing."

£10,000 of treatment would include hundreds (or more likely thousands) of pounds in profit for them, so they would, in reality, just take the "loss" on the £1, rather than let an animal die and wave goodbye to £10k in revenue.

elsien

I'm fairly sure I've not had that clause in any of the consent forms I've had to sign. And if I know my dog is having a procedure then my phone is very firmly on for the duration.