Vets bills? rant

[Nikki]

Doctors / surgeons are paid a salary, unless they are in private practice, they don't get paid per treatment / diagnosis / operation, so there is no real comparison here.

i get paid a salary too, so not sure what the difference is??

what i am suggesting is if you were to look at paying for an op for yourself privately it would cost you a fortune. vets are basically private healthcare for animals - there is no NHS for animals - somehow i dont think joe public would appreciate increasing their national insurance contributions to pay for vet treatment for people's animals!!! we pay a fortune for our healthcare really - it just comes out of our wages in our national insurance contributions then we think we get our healthcare for free coz we've forgotten about the ££££££ that we pay each month. The unemployed etc basically get their healthcare for free coz they dont pay national insurance - the rest of us pay for them! same with pet healthcare - the unemployed get it for free through the PDSA etc, the rest of us pay for it - the 2 systems actually compare quite well.

[Nikki]

you dont have to be unemployed to recieve medical treatment so i dont agree with that,
pdsa or rspca do free treatment if owner is destitute or unemployed ,
dont know one vet who will do free treatment if joe public walks in off street

and the NHS do free treatment for the unemployed etc while joe public pays for it through national insurance - dont suppose you'd expect to be able to say no to paying national insurance and still get treated. joe public doesn't get free healthcare in this country, so why should it expect free vet treatment? if our healthcare system was like the americans (and thank god it isn't), but then people might at least appreciate how much healthcare costs.

[marky]

Ive recently been made REDUNDANT but i can see your point. The thing is youve paid your stamp etc all your working life & you get naff all off the government. The lazy gits get everything

[Nikki]

Ive recently been made REDUNDANT but i can see your point. The thing is youve paid your stamp etc all your working life & you get naff all off the government. The lazy gits get everything

the government has a lot to answer for. please dont blame it all on us vets, and especially not on us lowly assistants who see a fairly measly wage considering 5yrs at uni and the hours we work and the fact that we will sit up till 4am, or even all night if needed for absolutely no extra money just because we care about the animals and want to make them better. yes, my boss does make a fair profit, but to be honest i wouldn't want his job with all the stress of running the business, coping with all the legislation and then dealing with the clients who are never happy because we either charged too much or failed to fix their animals and often because they wouldn't pay to get them vaccinated, speyed etc etc etc. i do my best for all the animals in my care and i charge what i'm told to.

[marky]

The animals appreciate it mate

[nero279]

Vets bills can be expensive, but at the end of the day the vets are earning their living, if they gave out freebies to people they wouldn't afford to live. It's like asking a tradesman to do something for free cos you can't afford it. If your surf head goes are you gonna ask Tony to change it for free? Generous as he may be, i'm sure i can guess the answer. As has already been pointed out, it's the government who pay out the taxes we give them for the NHS to treat humans, not the doctors themselves.

It's not the vets who should pay for the treatment if owners can't afford it. My view is if you can't afford to look after or insure an animal, don't get one. That doesn't just mean food bills either, that's vets bills too. Fair enough if your circumstances change during the life of your animal, that's when i think the charities should act and help you out. Our last dog cost us £400 a month in vets bills for ongoing treatment the insurance only paid for the first 10 years of treatment, she lived to almost 16 years and became ill at 6 months old.

[marky]

Its the same as owning a car. You have running costs & maintenance as well as Insurance MOT etc

[Bibs]

Vets are expensive I agree - thats why I am always insured. Some are worth their weight in gold though. So far in the last 10 months my bill is upto £1000, they helped save me horse when he was ill, came down within 15 mins of callin um out - spent 2 hours setting up a drip for him then came back in the afternoon to check an remove it. He is also being treated for a fractured tooth which might need an op.....that's gonna be mega bucks. I would always suggest people think of the worse case and get appropriate cover, this takes away the worry of how you will pay, an you can concentrate on lookin after the animal in the best way possible.

[Scorpion]

Nikki, so sorry if my comments offended you. It wasn't a personal thing. I fully appreciate how much work would be involved in looking after a sick animal. I'm not against paying a reasonable fee, if I have to pay £30 to £40 an hour for a mechanic then I don't mind paying the same for a vet. I do begrudge paying £53 for 1 antibiotic injection and 5 minutes of the vets time, and that's no exageration.

I can see you work incredibly hard and by the looks of it the bulk of the money goes to someone else. Some of your comments regarding the cost of our own health care were unessacary though, I'm no fool and I'm well aware of all the facts and figures you quoted. Then again you do have a right to defend yourself when critisisim is levelled at your profession. Don't take it all personally and I hope you aren't sticking two fingers up at the screen after reading this!

[joker??]

i pay insurance for my bulldog as a lot of breed related illnesses,
but you tell me how you can justify £500 without treatment or vet on hand for 1 night locked up in a cage
as for the price of the food in the surgery what a rip off,
i feed natural diet and have had an arguement with vet about this ,i dont need science plan

[marky]

i pay insurance for my bulldog as a lot of breed related illnesses,
but you tell me how you can justify £500 without treatment or vet on hand for 1 night locked up in a cage
as for the price of the food in the surgery what a rip off,
i feed natural diet and have had an arguement with vet about this ,i dont need science plan

5 star hotels are cheaper

[Bibs]

i pay insurance for my bulldog as a lot of breed related illnesses,
but you tell me how you can justify £500 without treatment or vet on hand for 1 night locked up in a cage
as for the price of the food in the surgery what a rip off,
i feed natural diet and have had an arguement with vet about this ,i dont need science plan

I see ya point mate - me an few mates at the yard have just had our horses swabbed for Stangles - hers came back positve and she had to give antibiotics to all four. Has cost her well over £400 - another Vet from the same practice was down sayin she wouldn't have given the antiboitics that she would have waited to see what develops.

Imagine how me mate felt - she's gone beserk.

[Apache]

Vets are expensive I agree - thats why I am always insured.

Wow, a typing horse!!!

[Bibs]

Wow, a typing horse!!!

Ha ha

[POPEYE]

They are expensive and i dont mind that so much if the treatment works, the pi$$er comes when like us on two occaisions have paid £400 for a terapin and
£300 for a chinchilla only to be told that it would be better to put em to sleep, after several trips and treatments, thats smacks of rip off a bit to me,