What happens if you can't afford vet bill?

[witchycat2]

Not happening to me, but a scenario of someone else has got me wondering.

What happens if your dog is injured and the treatment would cost say, £5k, and you literally can't pay it and have no insurance?

Does the vet put the dog to sleep? Do they seize the dog? Do you have the debt collectors round?

Sorry for the mis spelling. Where’s the edit button?
To make clear, the £40.70 included the consultation, his cleaning, clipping treatment & the cost of the Loxicom. I was also in his surgery for nearly an hour as we were chatting, nobody else waiting though had been one before me.
Think I’ll move to live there!!!

I think the conglomerates & the introduction of insurance, which there never used to be for pets, has caused prices to rocket.

I think everyone with a pet should think now what they would do in that situation, and discuss it frankly with anyone they share finances with. How much is your limit on your insurance, and do they have a good reputation for paying up? Do you have savings? How do you feel about putting your pet, at their age, through expensive treatments? What would that mean for you? Do you have a lot of insurance, chunky savings, or would you be turning to credit and cancelling your summer holiday and selling your car? What if you did all that and the treatment failed? Talk through that with your partner now if you share finances. I've had to make that decision under a huge amount of pressure before and it was hideous, but we made the right call (with hindsight) and we are fortunate enough to have a good cushion. If you talk about it now you can buy more insurance if you need to.
Gentle, loving euthanasia is very far from the worst thing that can happen to an animal. I'd be sorry for the humans in that scenario but not the animal.

Maybe publishing more vet costs so that people make informed choices would help, I have insurance on all my pets. While they are healthy, it seems a waste, but we've been caught in the past.
Referencing to the NHS actually should make people appreciate it and use it wisely. We are lucky to have it. Imagine not being able to get treatment for your child. Literally patch up and go. You wouldn't say 'ok Mrs Smith, your circumstances changed, you can no longer afford to keep Peter, put to sleep'

Pet owners can be as attached to their pet as human relative. I can see the attraction of a national pet scheme. At present, it's called insurance.

Most vets will try to offer a solution, it could be transferring to a not for profit animal hospital, could be a payment plan and sometimes they will try to make it as economical as possible even discounting for long term clients but ultimately they don't have to. Get pet insurance!

My vet has been amazing I should add, never chased a bill as they knew we would pay even if insurance was dragging its feet, they also refused to take payment for his final bill if you know what I mean, sent cards to both of us (divorced) and thinking of you at Christmas cards too, again to each of us which is very thoughtful. (Ex did drop flowers for the vet and sweets for the staff room to say thank you for 13 years of service)

Try and find an independent vet. Corporates reel you in with prices for routine stuff and then sting you for cost wise for anything extra.
Also care has improved lots in the last few years and ability and support and this is not cheap. Am a vet myself and have my animals insured for the more serious problems. We don't try to fleece you off and we try and work with you in regards of your financial options.
But I have to say that pets are a luxury and not a necessity and they do cost a lot of money! And it needs to be factored in when wanting to own one. Mine cost about £300 a month with insurance, food, treats etc.
For longterm clients we would usually offer payment plans but not all vets do this. And actually it is really hard to deal with pets where we can't treat them properly/ investigate properly due to money restraints. And I don't know any vet who is in it for the money as most of us are paid shit all for the money we owe in student debt and for the amount of time we spent training and the hours we put in.

You’re lucky having access to an independent vet surgery. That’s not something available in my area unfortunately.

I don’t. It was only on a visit to my father, hundreds of miles away, in the very north of Scotland where I found that. All the vets round me are now run by a conglomerates with crazy charges , £65 for a simple consultation before any treatment costs in regular hours.
A friend paid £302 to have her dogs claws clipped. It’s beyond ridiculous now.

Well that’s fucking ridiculous…..loads of people don’t have pets ….why should they pay for other peoples?🙄

"A friend paid £302 to have her dogs claws clipped."

Why didn't she clip the dog's nails herself? You can get a pair of clippers for under a tenner, even the best ones (DoggyMan) are only about twenty quid online.

We don't have pet insurance, I put about £150 into an account each month and currently have about 1.5k. It does worry me that one big bill will wipe it out.

@Octember Yes, our dog goes in for an annual checkup and I’ve been surprised at how many conditions can be detected and treated now. He’s elderly now so we’ve decided to be cautious about what we’ll have treated - essentially, if he’s not in any discomfort, we’re declining the treatment. If he gets something nasty that requires major surgery or unpleasant treatment, we’ll have him pts.

I explained this to the vet a couple of years ago and I could tell that she was judging me- but he’s in his final years and we all have finite resources. 🤷

Surely, unless your pet is very old with complex health issues (?) insurance would be less than £150 a month…? £1.5k is barely anything in terms of vets bills and that would really frighten me. We paid £800 for a Guinea pig to have an eye removed (tumour) - obviously you can’t get Guinea pigs insured but with a cat or dog especially I would be terrified without insurance.

Actually when you think about it, it's not a bad idea. If it was run as an animal tax kind of thing. Anyone who has pets has to pay into it kind of deal.

Might stop some of the irresponsible ownership, if people can't afford the tax, they definitely can't afford the pet.

But it probably wouldn't work as the amount from each owner wouldn't even touch the cost to run such a thing. Good idea in principle but in practice probably not so much.

Mandatory insurance would be more practical. Not foolproof as they won't cover everything but better than how things are now.

My insurance wouldn't pay out a full amount because I'd put mixed breed on the quote rather than lurcher (which is a mixed breed) - I genuinely never saw a lurcher option when taking out the insurance either and I'd had it and paid for it for several years. The reason for the claim had nothing to do with breed either, it was for cancer lump removal of her breast tissue.

They eventually paid half but I had to put the rest on credit card and was paying it off for over a year.

Yes the problem is he is eight years old and he has never been insured so would be hard to insure him now. We lost our older dog ( aged 13 ) very suddenly earlier this year but apart from one lot of dental extractions ( which I have heard are often not covered by pet insurance anyway) she cost us very little. We do have other ways we could raise more money if we had to for example we have good good credit so could take a loan or remortgage the house if we really had to. We would always find a way for a beloved pet. Sorry I wouldn't pay £800 for a guinea pig though, lovely as they are.

@Miley1967 why is a Guinea pig less worthy ? My sisters Guinea had about 1k spent on her for treatment of an extensive abscess after she was bitten by another one and we spent around £600 on the other one on the day we had him pts having X-rays to see if he could be saved . We then took him to the pet crematorium that I use for all the family pets and had him cremated for another £170 .

So are kids....

Kids will grow up and contribute to society. Tax payers money spend on them is an investment. Not so with pets

We just had one of those over Xmas- young healthy dog ate a rock (don't ask) which had to be surgically removed from his intestines. He's absolutely fine now, top form, should have permission to resume off-lead walks tomorrow - which for him means zooming. He wants to zoom now, but he's got to have one more check with the nurse tomorrow to confirm all fully healed. The total bill was 6k (insured). Does that seem like a lot? It included

• first blood tests for diagnostics, showed nothing except dehydration, first night spent in local vets
• x-ray the next morning: stone found in intestines
• transport by animal ambulance from local vet to animal hospital
• emergency surgery w/ all the drugs that entailed
• 2 nights in animal hospital
• antibiotics and doggy cocodamol to go home

Does that sound like 6k? I suppose it is, we're probably just inured to the costs of medicine.

@iloveeverykindofcat yes sounds right with the additional number of nights and transport.

The last time that happened to us was a couple of years ago and surgery was around 3k at the emergency vets and that was without transport and only an overnight stay.

a life doenst always have to be saved
if the treatment is £5 thousand, that is may be too much

I find it difficult at times as some clients are willing to get into debt over pets when they really shouldn’t and won’t be persuaded otherwise. Others expect someone else to foot the bill and can’t understand why it’s their responsibility and nobody else’s.

It tends to go something like
-Alternative cheaper treatments offered, for example amputation rather than fracture repairs or in house rather than referral.
-Offered credit. This is now outsourced to external company (as so many didn’t pay!) and most clients are rejected. Some vets now use klarna etc.
-Some clients use credit cards/family etc.

If none of those are viable options then the only real choices are euthanising or signing over to the vet practice. We tend to do a lot of the latter providing the pet can be rehomed (and has a nice temperament!) which leaves us the challenge of rehoming them all on top of everything else. This costs the practice a fortune and probably means in a roundabout way we are paying for other people’s pets…

@BiteyShark
yeah we hoped to him have back the day after the surgery but he was still showing a lot of pain on the first day so they kept him another night to monitor. The next morning he was much better. So I guess that was only responsible of them.

What a ridiculous suggestion