Ministers also considering licence requirement and regulator to try to cut bills and increase choice
As it happens that’s about vets’ prescriptions. But the subject matter isn’t relevant, it’s the very idea. Not gonna work, is it?
Ministers also considering licence requirement and regulator to try to cut bills and increase choice
As it happens that’s about vets’ prescriptions. But the subject matter isn’t relevant, it’s the very idea. Not gonna work, is it?
My local vets is now part of a multinational chain. They have the same people and are still very good, but I wonder how long that will last.
Luckily my pussycat is quite healthy and visits are rare.
Pets@Home are a right rip off
There is a lot of truth in the rise in prices now PE has bought up lots of vets. However the biggest rise started a few years ago when the government started interfering – they made a lot of noise about prices charged by the big chains, and rather than keep their prices where they were the independent vets either raised theirs to match or sold out to them.
Nothing the government can’t mess up by interfering.
Nothing like “inspections, a mandatory licensing system and published compliance reports to”
improve accountability and choiceincrease cost of treatments.I suspect some of the high price level is not just down to the vastly broader,more costly and deeper range of treatments paid for by insurance policies nowadays, but also the trouble with the supply of vets. Clever empathetic females who love animals are not the type to enjoy meeting sales targets set by their private equity investors.
3 months ago my local vet said she’s giving up at 35 and starting a job in Sept with an dog behaviour online company. i suspect she was fed up with the sales target side.. she never said but i could tell when she suggested various specialist referrals that they weren’t necessary and her heart wasn’t really in it. .
How does the dog call up the website ?
So, how long does it take for Fang to see a vet? Does the vet refuse you if there’s no insurance? How long does it take for a human to see a GP? The difference is between government and regulation vs a free market.
Couple of stories there.
Took my cat on short notice to the vet (phone call), they wanted a CT scan* which they arranged for the next day. Cost $1000 all up, but it meant they could arrange treatment that worked. My girlfriend at the time said “but I just had one of those and it was free” . I said “someone, somewhere was paying, this is what it costs, and how long did you have to wait for that?”
The other one was the vet who prescribed capsules of human pain drugs rather than the expensive individual cat tablets. She said “break them open and divide the powder into eighths. Chop it up with a credit card”. I replied “thanks,, I can do that”. The point being that human prescriptions were much cheaper. Because there was a subsidy there.
*I resisted the urge to say don’t you mean a CAT scan?
Yeah, I had a dog on a human heart drug.
His story is quite interesting. He had a common genetic heart defect. This was discovered when I took him to Camden Veterinary Hospital over another matter. Their heart specialist was interested because the particular condition is usually found in conjunction with other health problems so difficult to isolate. However Dæmon was in perfect health & extremely fit. So a perfect study. So he was signed up for a research course & would spend a day at the hospital every three months. Usually they would put a dog in the pen but he used to spend his test days under a desk in the office. About a year into this he got bitten by another dog during a day out to the seaside with one of my clients & developed an abscess. He was in the veterinary hospital in Hertfordshire by the end of the day for an op with his own personal nurse after the specialist drove down to see him. He did eventually develop symptoms of the heart condition & one point was on 6 different drugs which kept him reasonably comfortable until he eventually passed away. The entire thing cost me precisely nothing. I was told the research results were invaluable & provided new ways of treating dogs with the condition
I trust Dæmon wasn’t named after the dreadful Pullman trilogy. 🙂
I booked my annual dental checkup recently and noticed they’ve been gobbled up by some conglomerate.
There is an issue with independent vets, that have been running perfectly well for years, being gobbled up by big corporations. They immediately ‘sweat the assets’ by ratcheting up the prices of services. The direct costs of delivering services haven’t necessarily increased by the same rate as the price rises, other than the need of those corporations to get a ROI on their aggressive acquisition led expansion. But because this process is naturally reducing the number of suppliers, and barriers for new entrants are high, the price rises aren’t being competed away. Whilst the independent vets who sold out were presumably rewarded, the process is not frictionless for the customers who are now more dependent on fewer providers who may even have oligopolistic power in local areas. This doesn’t mean there is illegal collision going on, but there has been a shift in market power against the consumer. This is why the CMA is starting to sniff around the sector.
But why have vets, happy to be independent businesses for donkeys’ years, now seen the allure of selling out to the conglomerates? Could it be anything to do with the vast increases in time, money and heartache that Dealing With The Bureaucracy has dumped on small business owners?
Lot of differences between vets. Pets usually get taken to veterinary clinics which cost a fortune. I used to take the dogs out to deepest Essex to a vet I knew did farm related work. Cost a fraction of the clinics’ prices. Exactly the same treatments but as she said, “I can’t charge a farmer 12 quid for injecting his cow then 350 for doing the same to his dog.”
I do the same here, now. The g/f’s dog gets taken 60km half way to Granada in the deep campo. What would be 2-300€ here is 45 there.
“…There is an issue with independent vets, that have been running perfectly well for years, being gobbled up by big corporations. ..”
Hear! Hear!
The only regulation needed is the one we used to have, which was that only vets can own vet practices. Once the (usually American) BigCorps get involved, then the price ramping will start. It’s true of vets, it’s becoming true of dentists, and the lawyers aren’t far behind.
Get the money-grabbers out of it.