I have a cat with asthma & he needs an inhaler, but they don’t make special ones for cats so it is a human one.
Flixotide 125mg.
The animal hospital vet prescribed this and I used to pay £57 for 120 days supply. Sadly my cat gets very stressed in the car and the hospital involves a round trip of 35 miles, so i moved him to a more local vet who now want to charge me £87 for the same.
( the stronger one he used to have Flixotide 250mg cost £87 from the hospital, yet the new vet wanted to charge me £150 , till I told them they had made a mistake )
I said that it seemed like they were charging extortionate prices, so how much would it cost for a years prescription & they said they could let me have one for £19.50.
I then contacted an online prescription company & asked if they would accept a vet’s prescription & they said they could. I asked how much they would charge for each inhaler & they said £27.64.
This means that the vet would charge me £261 for a years supply but the online pharmacy would charge me £102.42 and that includes the cost of the prescription from the vet, so the annual saving would be £158.58.
I appreciate that vets need to make a profit and will pay the cost of any treatment they use on my pet, but when I have to administer the medicine myself & they just provide it I think that a profit, that is more than double the actual cost of the medicine, is a rip off!
Yes that sure is a rip off, but I’m surprised the on-line pharmacy are sending you one through the postal system. When I tried to send a small pressurised air can via Royal Mail, my small parcel was refused. I tried another PO and told them it was a toy and off it went. There is a long list of prohibited parcel contents so I had to be untruthful.
I don’t know how the bliddy vets get away with charging so much, it’s disgusting. I fell out with our vet when he was on a visit to see one of the farm animals. I told him I remember well when vets used to be all about helping animals, and charged a price people could afford. Now your all about how much money you can screw out of people. He was none too chuffed, I know of several older people who would love a pet for company, and would adopt from a rescue, but can not have one, as they can’t afford to pay bliddy vets bills.
Our Vet in Bexhill was expensive but after the excellent treatment Saber our precious Puss received, which was life or death, we just brushed it aside…
When one of our pet Chickens had a health issue we went to a farming vet in Battle…Far superior I felt and seemed fairer prices… compared with the normal Vets.
We had to take our Pet Duck name of Sue there soon after as well, felt relieved that there was a Farm Vet as our regular Vet did not treat farmy type animals at all…
We have had occasions to visit a French Vet and expected a large bill but did not seem to bad…the calming, flea and worming treatments are more expensive though than the UK…I do use online when possible…
Seems most vets here can charge what they like, but some will treat wild animals for free & even school pets, when pets were aloud, the year Son brought Gerbils home in the Summer holidays once a long time ago. Don’t know if schools still have pets now.
It’s sensible to have pet insurance I think. It has saved my friends a lot over the years.
Tiff, Insurance is another rip off IMO. It starts out fine at ten pound a month, but goes up each year. Dageus is now ten years old and the insurance wanted £40 a month. I would not pay that in a million years, and put money aside every month for vet bills. It’s better in my bank than theirs.
Years ago, when we were first married, we never had pet insurance for our dog, and the vet’s fees were always affordable. I swear that since it’s become the norm for everyone to have pet insurance (as Rox says, another rip off!) the vet’s charges have increased astronomically - it seems the sky’s the limit with them now.
I’m sure the insurers and vets are in cahoots on this. And it makes me so bloody angry, because now with the charges so high, you are forced to take out insurance. And they know this. It’s just all spiralled out of control. I even remember our vets, back in the days when not that many people had pet insurance, asking us whether we had insurance - we were asked before the invoice was drawn up, and I swear that invoice would have been lower if we’d said we didn’t.
My friend had a saying “vets have a licence to print money.” And I think that’s very true.
They know that most people love their pets so much that they will pay anything to make them better.
i used to work with a woman who had an ancient cat which she adored. It became ill and she had the vet out (that cost a fortune for a start but she said she didn’t want to disturb the cat!). He said she was very poorly so she said “I don’t care what it costs, but I am not ready to part with her yet”. That was a crazy thing to say to a vet.
She paid nearly £2000 to keep it alive for 10 more days! That was about 15 years ago so it would be double that now.
Can’t you just go to the Chemist and buy an inhaler from there? My middle son had asthma and the Ventolin(sp?) inhaler was only a few bucks from the chemist.
Bruce I don’t know what the riles are in Australia, but here Chemists will only provide inhalers if they have been prescribed by a doctor , or vet!
Sorry I see somebody has already told you this!
