Vets charge too much for animal medication.

[Friedchickenrocks]

Our dog's been diagnosed with Cushing's Disease, where the pituiary gland secretes too much hormone. We don't have pet insurance. She was drinking like a fish, peeing everywhere and ravenous appetite. Humans can get it too but it's rarer than in dogs. She's to be on tablets for the rest of her life and is 11. They're £96 for 30 and vet's now prescribing 180 for 6 months so almost £600. May get them cheaper online but am a bit reluctant to buy medication from the Net.

Yes they are ridiculous in price .Definitely worth getting a prescription from the vets which will be charged for and getting them from online pet drug company .
I saved over 70 p per tablet

Yes, thanks. Can get them for £333 plus the £16 he wants for a prescription. Shows vets are making a huge profit.

Online drug companies are still regulated but are often cheaper than the wholesalers vets are required to use. Look for prices from a reputable supplier and request a prescription.

Remember also that animal numbers are lower than people so anything specifically animal has higher R&D costs and must be used in preference to a generic human drug if there is an appropriate veterinary drug thanks to the Cascade.

The vet isn't making that profit, the drug company is...

I always get a prescription and buy meds. They’re not dodgy companies- try 365vet.

So sorry to hear your ddog has Cushings. My parents dog had this in his later life. It caused so much stress for them. They ended up getting the tablets online, which made it about £30 a month. But the vets kept charging them about £12 for the prescriptions and kept saying the dog had to have regular blood tests which also pushed the cost up. In the end, they went down the cheaper homeopathic route and stopped going to the vets. Sadly their dog died shortly after they'd changed over.

It's a horrible disease, I hope you are able to manage the cost of it all. Sending hugs.

Our vet is very good and we often have a note attached to our dogs drugs saying that the medication is packaged for a child/human but exactly the same, just cheaper, than the animal version and how to administer it. DDog has even had banana flavoured antibiotics.

You also have to bear in mind that unlike the human stuff, veterinary medicine has 20% VAT on it as well.

The problem is that online retailers have buying power that vet surgeries don't.

A company that sells out of a massive warehouse can buy (and store) thousands of bottles of painkillers (for example) but a tiny vet practise can only buy (and store) maybe 100 bottles at a time.

PetDrugsOnline is a good website.

Yes do, it’s far far cheaper & totally reliable & safe using one of the reputable suppliers. I’ve done it for years particularly with one of mine who needed four seperate drugs for five years, saved thousands when added up, £600+ every six months from vet, £148 from Animed for exact same pills in exact same boxes!
I also have used VetUK & VioVet, in the past all very reliable
Must say £16 for the prescription is good. My vet charged £22 each for the four different drugs.

The drug companies charge the same no matter who they sell to. I buy straight from the companies. For eg enrofloxin (which is a standard, popular antibiotic with brand names such as baytril), can be bought from a supplier for £2500 for 30 litres. Vets for pets will sell it at 0.1ml for £40. That’s a profit of almost £12m. A non profit vets will generally sell it for around 60p per 0.5ml. A ridiculous amount of money is made from pricing up medications.

My dog's monthly medication was £197 for a 2 month supply from the vet. It's £88 from Viovet with a £25 every 6 months. Definitely investigate buying online OP.

Vets do make money on medications. But if they weren’t doing that, they’d have to charge more for their consultation fees in order to make a good profit. I see it in a similar way to other professionals like optometrists. Often the cost of an eye test is very low but they make their money selling glasses and contact lenses.

I just got quotes for dog insurance and in all my quotes one offered a limit of £7500 a year on one condition and the rest were lower, most around 3-4k. Well someone I know their dog needs ligament surgery both sides and it’s 11k. Their insurance isn’t enough. I think with the cost of operations so high a lot of people would find themselves in the same boat.

Years ago it might only have been complicated spinal surgery which would go above your policy, now it’s fairly routine stuff.

I literally didn’t have a quote which gave me the 10k cover I was looking for so need to keep looking.

And yes the medication online will be the same. Another friend does this for her dog, pays her vet £20 for a sixth month prescriptions and the meds are half price what the vet charges. She saves a fortune.

We pay for the prescription and buy online. It saves a fortune.

There have always been animal pharmacies. Now they’re online but years ago in rural areas a pharmacy would cater for animals and humans.
You have to upload the prescription for the medication to be dispensed and vet meds are highly regulated in the uk.

I saw something on the news the other day about the government needing to look into the massive costs of vet bills. Sorry I was diving and just caught a short bit about it so can't say what exactly they were saying. I only noticed it because I've recently had a dispute with my vet about trying to charge me £56 for something for my dog that they admitted they did when he was in for a procedure and now they're denying all knowledge of them doing it and want me to pay it. The item is £27 online for twice the size!

Pet drugs online. All one word- I’ve been getting meds for years from them. I’ll try and link not sue mn allows. If you search in the doghouse you’ll see others also purchase from that site. My vet told me about it.

https://www.petdrugsonline.co.uk/

Yes @NorfolkEnchantsIsThere DM did too. I hope they change things as people simply can’t afford it- even with insurance.

I've used animeddirect.co.uk and viovet for medication.
I spoke to a nurse at our vets and she said they aren't able to buy the medication in anywhere close to the price the online pet pharmacies do. Guess it's all down to bulk buying. Vet practices are usually happy to do prescriptions and most even offer straight away.

My vet has already told me to look online as even paying them for the prescription it will still be cheaper to go to the online companies.

My vet was upfront about this and told me to buy online. She said they couldn't buy at the prices that the online pharmacies were selling for as they buy in huge bulk numbers. She told me her price and told me to shop around. I appreciated her honesty.

We buy a prescription from the vet to buy the medication ourselves online from PetDrugsOnline. However, our cats current medication, Gabapentin, we can only get from the vets as no online company will sell it to us.
An independent vet we were at said they are beholden to the drugs companies for the price they are charged and so have to charge more to their clients. The online drug websites have greater buying power so can charge less. Not sure how true that is, but it's what we were told.