I knew the increase in vet fees had to be a scam

[Crazyworldmum]

https://apple.news/ADt8WFAeZQ3a6Xpqd3Xz13g

I’ve been saying all along the increase in vet fees in the last decade has been out of this world .
I used to be a small hobby breeder ( pedigree cats ) and spaying , vaccinations and microchipping was all around £80 per kitten . Now all of it will easily cost £400 or more .
Vet fees in other countries maintained a normal increase , France , Portugal , Cyprus Spain had affordable vet care ( 50 to 80% less than the U.K. ) and vets are paid the same as here wage wise .
The uk is having the cost controlled by these companies that are purposely inflating prices .

I do sometimes wonder why I bother with insurance for my senior cat. It now costs the best part of £50 a month and I have to pay over £100 excess per claim plus £25% of what's left. Consultations etc not covered of course. Still a hefty bill, and now the Vet wants it up front and so I have to pay up and wait for the claim. The vet also charges £15 admin fee to process the claim - they didn't used to do that until fairly recently.It feels like I'm being penalised for having insurance. We are supposed to be a nation of pet lovers aren't we? Maybe they just think we're a soft touch.

Why aren’t consultations covered?

That £15 fee sounds very unreasonable.

Well I assume the insurance is just for if they are ill or injured. Once I wanted flea meds and I rang and asked if I could pick some up, and they wanted me to bring her in for a consultation so they could get her weight. She finds the vet visits very stressful and had only been in 3 months earlier when they had weighed her. In the end I didn't have to take her but if I had just said yes ok, I'm sure they would have charged me another consultation fee on top of the meds.

I pay a lot less for most things than typical fees I see on here but I take my elderly cat to a practice that is owned by the partners not a chain and it's an old fashioned country practice that does farm animals and horses as well as pets. For that reason I haven't bothered with insurance ( or unnecessary worming and flea treatments).
She did cost me £350 last year but that was for two anaesthetics, three exams and several injections after she got grass stuck in her nose/ soft palette that took several attempts to get out.

It's not really a scam, it's the private equity business model. Load up the business with massive piles of debt, see only money and not value, take several pounds of flesh from the staff, drain all the profits, then sell it on to someone to do the same thing on steroids.
Evil.

I have to admit I was staggered by the naivety of the final line of the article:
"One of the vets we spoke to says he believes IVC's main goal is making money for the venture capitalists behind the company."

Well... obviously! Did he think they were in it to help animals?? Not in the slightest.

Recently had my 3 cats yearly vaccinations,
cost £300 odd 🙄 Pre Covid it was about £40 a cat. They have you over a barrel really and if you need to use catteries for holidays then they need to be vaccinated. The vet started hinting about one of them getting on a bit now and maybe needing some blood tests etc to see how things are….Errr she’s 10, still eating, drinking and playing. I’ll pass thanks.

I have spent years saying they are cheating us and pushing for unnecessary treatments. We take a hugely pragmatic approach to our pets and often home treat but have seen friends spend £££ just in case.

Another example of how this country suffers from a government that thinks its role is to facilitate ‘competitive markets’ rather than to facilitate good services and fairness for its citizens.

The shame of it.

It’s not the whole story though. I’m a vet, had my own practice for 20 years plus. We kept prices low by short appointment times, using cheap generic drugs and providing a safe but no frills service. We absolutely had high standards but not referral level. I know work part time in another independent practice. Prices have risen massively but my boss is by no means well off, she has a second hand car and a small three bed new build. This is just to contextualise the profit level.
costs have increased massively
we are no longer allowed to use generic or human drugs if there is a licensed vet alternative
clients expect longer appointments
there are massive increases in red tape type legislation, health and safety etc that require more staff office time.
clients expect a more gold standard level of vet care
which is fine but we are now at a level where medical care for pets is way ahead of your average medical care on the NHS.
there was an interesting article in a vet paper recently , comparing the treatment of the authors daughter with a medical condition to that of a dog. The dogs care was way faster and superior .
i myself presented to a and e recently with a pneumothorax. I sat in the waiting room with not even pain relief for three hours , even after they suspected a pneumothorax, I was just sent to sit on a plastic chair by the nurses station “ so they would notice if I deteriorated “
had a cat come in to the surgery with the same condition, it would have been immediately triaged and given pain relief , put on oxygen, had someone monitoring it constantly , plus an X-ray and probably a chest drain within an hour . This is what people expect , but it doesn’t come cheap.

When my dog was a puppy my then vet was "concerned " about a wobbly baby tooth, saying it was cracked and a 'portal to infection ' and must be removed. At a bargain price of £475! I said absolutely not, it wasn't infected and being that it was wobbly it would fall out of its own accord soon enough. Vet then emailed that evening saying that she'd got the price wrong and for a baby tooth it was actually only £375! Get it booked in immediately! I told her in no uncertain was I going to have my pup put under anesthetic for no good reason. She said several times 'but he's insured'. Anyway I ignored her after that and the tooth fell out on its own less than a week later. To me it was just a ploy to get money, no care for the dog at all.

Always baffled me as to why horse vet (who comes to you with portable xray machine = less than 1/3 cost of taking dog to vet for xray. Ditto vaccinations, horse vet comes to you dog vet you take to them and it costs 3 or 4 x as much

@3smallpups makes some entirely valid points. The other thing the consolidators do is provide support for back-end systems and help take some of the burden of running the business off the senior vets, who have been trying to do that and vetting.

The problem is that the people who go into the PE business are only motivated by making money and not in the slightest by the welfare of the business or the people in it. So they make them pay the price, and the customers pay in all ways. With competition removed the cartel can ramp up prices as high as they like, really. It's taken years for the regulator to even officially notice the issue in vets, and is anything going to actually happen for the better...?

The only thing that shocked me in the article was the naivety of people expecting it would be anything else. They're private businesses. Their only reason to exist is to make money.

I think the way the veterinary industry has gone is yet another reason why people should not keep pets.

We got a quote for chemo for our 5yo dog and the specialist vet came back with £12k… out local vet worked with us to keep it under £7k (our insurance max per year) including not charging us the fee to keep him in all day because the staff loved cuddles with him anyway. I can’t fault them. They also have previously said - go and buy calpol with sugar (not sugar free) as it’s cheaper than what they can sell but does the same for pain relief. Do not tell the pharmacist as they cannot sell if it’s not for a human.

Note that the vets you see are just as screwed over by this as the pet owners.

30 odd years ago professional practices (vets, lawyers, accountants etc) could only be owned by members of that profession so vet practice owners had to pay their juniors enough that they could be bought out when they reached retirement age... Salaries now have reduced relative to inflation and junior vets are struggling financially.

DH's first job (25 odd years ago) came with house (tax free because on call) and company car with unlimited private use. Now the salary paid to NQ vets is about the same as he got then but no house or car provided, if you're lucky you might get a van with limited or no private use allowed, if unlucky you get told you must have a suitable vehicle with a maximum age that you have to source yourself...

The money went to the older partners who sold out (although mostly less than they thought as many got pushed out before they could earn their final 'retention bonus' or the revenue/profit targets were impossible) and mostly to the venture capitalists.

There are starting to be some newer privately owned practices being created and some of the universities remain "independent" but the problem is often access to out of hours cover which has been heavily centralised into corporate owned out of hours services like vets now.

Like everything in the UK, we are ripped off

I decided when my last cat went in 2023 that I would not be getting another due to the lack of local vets to sign up with and the massive costs for treatment. Even if you have insurance, the older the pet gets, the higher the premiums.

It's sad as I've always had at least one cat, usually two or three and I'd love another one but I make do now with watching the occasional cat videos or visiting a friend who has a cat. 😿

I am so glad I am with an independent vet who has a social conscience - been with the practice itself for about 35 years. The current owner (been there about 30 years I reckon) is so reasonably priced, he had to refuse new registrations at his two sites a couple of year ago.

Before he closed the register, about 10 years ago, a colleague of mine had her dog registered with a small practice in a 'market town' about 25 miles away. It was cheaper for her to drive to my vet and have her dog treated than to stay with the expensive vet in the market town.

I only worry that when he decides to retire, there will be no-one to take over the practice who will be so community minded...

It's an absolute disgrace that people are being subjected to this immoral greed, yet again caused by the big corporates - looking at you, CVS who own my vets. We need legislation put in place to stop this emotional bribery harming our pets. An anonymous member of staff at my vets, told me a couple of years back what was going on with the practice refusing to supply prescription medicines unless you took your pet back to have a 'check up' every 3 months. For pets on lifelong medication - eg skin medication, Apoquel, this is an outrageous bump up to an extortionately expensive medication to start with. Sadly it works and there are no alternatives. As the owner of 3 dogs, all of whom have been on this drug, it adds another £60, 4 times a year (nice little earner of £240 per year for nothing) per dog, onto what was just a couple of 6 month prescriptions per annum in the past. Reason I don't buy the drug from my vets-they charge me £412 for a 3 month supply. Online, they cost £187. (Plus £20 per prescription). It's daylight robbery and don't the get me started on insurance - all of which is elevated because of the extortion caused by the corporates. Gone are the days when a little old lady can have a couple of rescue dogs and afford them on a pension. Dogs and cats are now a luxury item that only the rich - and to some extent, the very poor (PDSA) can afford. Again, the middle are being squeezed until they are bled dry and their animals potentially left to suffer.

Family owned vets are rarer than hens teeth these days. I blame pet insurance, it became a licence to print money.

OMG, we were charged about £800 for exactly this!!

I've just checked, & our previously independent vet surgery is now part of one of the big groups.

The need to see pets on prescribed meds comes from the RCVS - the animal must be "under the care" of the vet and the definition of this was tightened up not that long ago - it's not a practice level policy.

The origin of this tightening of the definition is debatable (drugs company/corporate lobbying) and wasn't popular in the industry press when it came in, but funnily enough vets like to keep their right to practice and this is the kind of thing that gets you made an example of...