AIBU VET BILL £5700

[bellewilson]

Long story apologies- We own a beautiful Exotic cat she is one year old. Perfectly healthy took for one year vaccinations and she had a bad reaction temp and loss of appetite and started getting wobbly on back legs after 6 days. Obviously back and forth to local vet but when became wobbly local vet suggested she was better off being assessed in local veterinary hospital. Take her there (have insurance with £4k limit was supposed to be their top of range superior plus policy) vet hospital assessed her and said we need to admit her for tests and suspected neurological FIP (cat coronavirus) sedated her and did X-ray and scans and biopsies of fluid found in chest and abdomen and blood tests. Only had her in for 24hours and bill was £3150 took a week to finally get results as positive for FIP carrier with low probability of infection which means with her ongoing symptoms they think she has neurological FIP. So as now 7 days later our cat has got more poorly not eating or drinking having to syringe feed/drink. Re-admitted to hospital and they agree to only do minimal care to keep her comfortable whilst antivirals drugs kick in (drip and appetite stimulation) and would cost max £280 a night admitted for 3 days and everyday checked with vet the bill and costs and how much left on insurance. Collected today to be told owe £5700 so £1700 over insurance. Was expecting £600 max but £1100 more than I was told on the phone several times is a joke. Ask for bill breakdown and it’s CF at its best and laughable they can actually get away with it… from working it out the initial £3150 they have charged approx £1400 just for sedation to do the X-ray £450 and ultrasound £680 plus extra for biopsy and tests plus nursing care and £450 consultation. I made it completely clear to them we couldn’t afford a large bill and they agreed all along to do a direct claim with our insurance company and get pre authorised payments from them through a portal. Turns out didn’t do that either so if insurance doesn’t pay we have to. What can we do. I have Googled and average cost for Anastasia for a cat is £300/400 in Uk so how can they charge 4x the average cost. AIBU? Any advice please so stressed.

I’ve just lost 2 beloved Dcat one to old age and one suddenly quite young due to kidney blockage - when he was younger they thought he had joint problems needing surgery which would be 3-4k I had no insurance and would have had to take out a loan but would have done so because he was very young and much adored
when I get next Dcat I will research properly re insurance as it’s a minefield
however do agree we are cushioned by NHS etc - a colleague who is married to a non U.K. citizen had recently had to find £27k for surgery for MIL in country of origin - then when op did not go according to plan got billed another £23k for additional surgery and as MIL still in hospital bills are still mounting

Sorry - have not read the whole thread.

depends what the terms of the contract are. Generally should be advised of approx cost and then if goes over advised as to what the bill is.

if you were not advised, you can rely on the simple law of reliance.

I work in a law firm and if we go over the bill estimate and don’t tell the client - on a strict legal basis they don’t have to pay, we get advised this in induction training!

"What I wonder about is the extreme lengths vets will sometimes go to and if it's always in the best interests of the animal." Often you only hear one side of the story, many clients think there are cures for the more common forms of death I proud up hold the oath I took to protect the animals in my care and advocate for them when euthanasia is the best options.
As my mother in law lies dying of starvation as she has lost her swallow reflex with Alzheimer's disease I have said more than once we wouldn't allow a dog suffer like this. I wish someone was able to protect her welfare as what's going on now sure as hell doesn't.
There are areas where human medicine and veterinary medicine run in parallel and others where they diverge. There will always be people who wish the two always ran in parallel for different reasons.

and people wonder why vets have such a high rate of suicide with clients like this

To be fair, most insurers won't pay out for teeth related ailments in cats. I have found Petplan to be much better than any other insurer.

I would look into that, our kitten who had an accident at 6 months last year went into vets for treatments and after multiple treatments and then unfortunatly was put down and it came to a triple digit number, but not into the thousands, given it's a vaccine your vet administered and they advised on the hospital, it is beyond unreasonable you pay regardless of the shitty insurance, the vets should pay up.

We called the vet to our goat who had one of her quads die pre birth. She came out on a Saturday morning, full internal exam, antibiotics administrated, ruminate administrated to get digestive system going, left us with programme of antibiotics. Gave other 3 kids once over and vit injections. Total time about 40 minutes plus drive to house 6km.
Bill was 80 Euro. I couldn't actually believe how they can run the practice at these charges, but glad they do. The same charge for a pony with laminitis last year.
No vet bashing here.

And our vet is a goat specialist who looks after a goat cheese production farm in her area, so we got specialist opinion for that price

100%, we have private medical insurance,before they paid the bill’s directly we used to have to pay and then reclaim, the bills for my MS dx were huge, people have no idea how expensive these services are as they are treated under the NHS.

@LovePoppy

"and people wonder why vets have such a high rate of suicide with clients like this".

I disagree. I just can't grasp some of the exorbitant prices OP's vets listed on bill. Some of the £1000+ fees for an £50 pain relief just don't make sense.

Our vets are the same.
I'm sorry but some practices are greedy.
When our puppy was tiny he sometimes seemed to have difficulty standing and our bet advised supplements for his joints at £200 a month. Not covered by insurance.
New vet laughed at that and asked if we had hard floors (we do downstairs). Said it's normal and took him straight off the supplements.
Like any business I suppose some are money grabbing and some are honest. They rely on the fact people care so much about their pets they'd do anything for them including put themselves in debt or cut back on their own food shopping.
Change vets and insurance policy (unless this is an ongoing condition which then might not be covered by new insurance)

But vets offer stuff that you wouldn’t get on the NHS as it wouldn’t be approved by NICE as being cost effective/ beneficial.

Pointless comparison as yours was not with a specialist referral vets, requiring multiple tests and overnight hospitalisations!

£37.71 is not a common salary for vets. I'm 25 years qualified, GP vet and I'm on less than £28. Massive gender pay gap for vets as well...

You mention she is a year old and that you took her for a vaccination. I therefore assume she has had a full kitten course and this was the first annual booster? Assuming the booster wasn’t overdue it would be worth your vet speaking to the vaccine manufacturer about the fact she contracted a disease she has been vaccinated against. In the case of a vaccine failure I believe the manufacturers will sometimes cover the cost of treatment.

I'm glad I 'pissed away money' on my cat.

He broke his jaw in 2016 and needed most of his teeth out - something he easily recovered from and had another 7 years. He was diagnosed with heart failure last year but because I 'pissed away money' on his medication he had a good last 6 months. His vet bills ran into thousands but he was worth every penny to me.

Unfortunately there is no vaccine for FIP. But it can be brought on by the vaccine wasn’t obviously told this as I wouldn’t have had them done. She is a house
cat so didn’t really need them but thought was better she did. Feel guilty now. On FIP GS medication now and in contact with a FIP support group to help get better treatment for her. We did consider letting her go as didn’t want her suffering but vet said to give them 24hrs on meds and she improved slightly. She is home and doing well but still wobbly but eating and drinking well. Thank you everyone will put in complaint and also speak to vaccination manufacturers and insurer xx

@Teateaandmoretea agreed, but you can question these things and decide whether on balance you want the pet to have them, and say no to treatments that you don’t deem fair and necessary. Vets will offer what they feel is optimal treatment to give owners options, etc. sometimes what science can do isn’t always the best solution for the animal IMHO.

For example, when our dog 13yrs old, became poorly we took him to see the vet, took temp, gave him painkiller, and meds, sent him back home. He seemed a better that afternoon, and managed to get him to eat, but the next day the symptoms had returned, refused to eat, it was a bank holiday weekend (isn’t it just always!) rang emergency vets, went though everything over the phone, he said nothing else I can do, it’s the correct treatment etc. see you vet on Tues, took dog to see her, she could see the deterioration, said can’t leave here like that, we can operate, blood tests etc or pts. DH & I were prepare for this question, we knew he had given up. We sadly agreed to have him pts. She said if you had said operate, I would have tried to talk you out of it. The skeptic in me has always wondered if she would have done that, that we will never know. We didn’t want our very poorly, elderly dog to go through a surgery that we knew would not have changed the outcome.

@Roselilly36 agreed, but it is often difficult to know as a pet owner whether something is right or not as you don’t have all the information. Plus there is all this pressure to do ‘all you can’ - evidenced by this thread with ridiculous comments about how people who won’t pay for everything possible shouldn’t ever have pets.

There is also the issue that some vets for whatever reason undoubtedly try to sell the most expensive treatments possible. It is nigh on impossible to know if these are best for your situation. My experience is sometimes other options are only given when you say no.

My own opinion is that if simple treatments don’t work and a pet is sick that pts is always a perfectly reasonable option, the people who shouldn’t have pets I think are the ones who prolong lives of pets even though they are in pain/ miserable and won’t take responsibility.

Unfortunately not many independent vets - not around here anyway.
Our insurance is £15000 pa pay out. Most we ever claimed annually was almost £8000. When we rescued the rescue said to get the maximum we could. She’s older now so we pay 20% proportion.

Hope she recovers but you do need better insurance.

Prolonging the life of sick pets is definitely an issue. We have a menagerie of animals, from chickens, a snake, horses, a dog.

I have a middle aged pony with melanomas, quite a lot we can see, probably many more internally. There are operations he could have to remove but tbh the minute they cause issues, he will be pts. Not because we don't love him, or can't afford it but because it's the right thing to do. Ditto my little dog, who is 13, full of mammary tumors and fatty lumps, all of which I declined surgery for last year despite her being insured because the last op she had at 8, took her a long time to recover from.

Bloody supervet has got a lot to answer for. Just because we can, doesn't mean we should.

I reckon the £30 plus ph would be a realistic rate for locums, ie no paid holidays or professional subscriptions needed for work etc. Salaried vets almost always on less. I would say no sick or maternity pay above statutory for locums also but that's standard for both unless the corporates are making big changes there.

I can see how an unusual scenario which requires specialist consultations and admissions for obs could quickly escalate in vets bills. However, I think it's very poor service for your vet to not keep you informed of the costs before proceeding with treatments at each stage and I would raise this with them. I would look at moving vets for the future.

I've had a similar experience with an old vet we used, who told us in the morning our dog would need a surgical procedure but it would be done under local anesthetic and cost £x. In fact, we were advised incorrectly and it wasn't something which could be done without a GA. They ended up giving our dog a GA without even informing us first or asking when the last time he ate and drank was. What annoyed me more than the higher vets bill as he had eaten less than 6 hours prior.

We have a lot of pets and a couple of vets which we use regularly. With both, they always breakdown the costs in detail before we sign consent forms. In a scenario where there may be a few different pathways for treatment, depending on what they find, we've always know the worst case scenario for costs, so have never had any nasty surprises. My dog was at the vets yesterday and needs a small surgical procedure, the vet had e-mailed me an itemised breakdown of the costs before DH had arrived home!

Jesus. Thank god we only had goldfish.

Not all vets charge such extortionate prices.

I've had three emergency OOH vet visits in the last 18 months (two for cats, one for the dog) and none of those cost me more than £120 and one was on NYE!

Last time I was at the emergency vets it was for my beagle who had a bad stomach bug - the vet nurse said "shall we give him X?" and the vet said "no, give Y - it'll do exactly the same thing and it's half the price".

The time before that was for a cat with a bad UTI - we paid for anti-sickness jabs, antibiotics, painkillers and the consultation and it only came to £96 as she refused to charge me the OOH fee.