Have you ever tried 1-800-PETMEDS?  I have always wondered about them... especially if they have medicine for small animals such as rats or if it is all just for cats and dogs.

It's the same for people scrips - you have to shop around, different pharmacies charge VERY different prices. As soon as Walmart introduced their generics plan, a lot of others jumped on the wagon - but for my NON generics it can cost between 100 to almost 300 a month depending on where I go. If you asked those expensive pharmacies, of course they don't want me to know about the cheaper ones. It just seems like the show is making it out as if only vets markup their product. There are plenty of low cost clinics and there is pet insurance.

Vets are a bit different from other businesses because they have to CARE about their patient, but that doesn't mean the vets can't make money.

And what, the companies are going to tell a reporter they are having business trouble? Of course they will say they are doing well, they don't want to make it look like their product is bad!

The show also bugged me because of the way the announcer talks "where there's love...there's...opporTUNITY!"
Bah.

They also mocked products for separation anxiety, motion sickness and obesity - you go on a dog forum and see how many people have dogs with those problems. SA is a big deal and if it comes to it, why NOT use a product to help ease it? She gives her cat insulin because the cat needs it - it's her responsibility to shop around!

I don't know what the fee is for, but it probably helps pay the tech's salary, proper storage for the drug, stuff like that. Yes, that sounds high.

What regulation in the US is on people prescriptions?

The show just sounded way too biased to be taken seriously. They started out with an agenda. They didn't go into it unbiased and therefore it's hard to watch it and really trust anything they say.

I definitely agree that the show isn't perfect.  But until I had seen it a while back I had never even realized how much different dispensing fees were.


Regulation of human-medication dispensing fees

It varies by state but in some a price-cap is approved by a committee.  According to several studies done by medicare, there are no fees over 11 dollars. One vet here charges 20.  There is legislation that is passing very soon that will regulate all dispensing fees with an over-all pricecap.

On the ethics of doctors selling/dispensing things to their patients directly from their practice

I am 100% for paying pharmacists a fair price for their time.  That being said, I don't consider the medications in the back to be a pharmacy.  Most vets here (I don't know other places, just speaking about here) fill their own prescriptions only.  Why should I pay for the techs salaries via the dispensing fees when I am paying 46-40 dollars per rat just for the appointment, then paying the cost and price-up of each test?  Just to be seen was 230 dollars for all of my girls for an appointment that lasted less than a half hour.  I love veterinarians and don't think it's great that they have the rap that they do, but in a world where my animal's life depends on me to be able to get them their medications regardless of whether or not it is payday I do feel that there is a problem.



In the human world, that actually pays for the pharmacist's time interpreting the prescription.  When you write your own, there is no interpretation needed. Secondly, it pays for the time spend on the phone with insurance companies.  Since most pet-insurance companies deal directly with the consumer though reimbursement, in the cases where a patient does have insurance it's rare a vet pharmacy deals with it.  In the human world, if a doctor offers for you to buy a prescription in his office, he is required by law to inform you that you can get it elsewhere. I personally had no idea you could do this until recently.  Most vets I've seen just rang it up with the bill.  Lastly, vet techs manning the counter aren't trained in the medications as a pharmacist is.  There are no regulations regarding this.  Recently, I had a vet tech tell me not to worry about dairy and antibiotics when dispensing me doxy, a drug that interacts badly with calcium.  I asked explicitly; she didn't even look at the label.  Every prescription for my pet lacks even basic information on the bottle and forget about getting a packet with it!  Every human prescription comes with at least a list of side-effects, interactions etc, and at a pharmacy there is a trained person standing behind the counter to ask questions to. 

If a human pharmacy whose SOLE job is to dispense medications does okay on less than 10 dollar dispensing fees (some as low as 1.97 ), I'm sure that the veterinarians who dispense medications on the side of their practice, will be fine.  The reason that pet medications have yet to be regulated is that there is no huge insurance company paying the fees, it's out of owner's pockets.  Even in the case of those with insurance, it will only cover the drug and a small fee.  In some states people are required by law to have health insurance. 

I have never seen a "dispensing" fee on my bills but I wouldn't mind if they needed to charge one.  Vets do not have the governmental funding and support that hospitals and pharmacies have.  They are basically small business owners and pretty much everyone at a vets office is way underpaid.  What I find to be a shame is that vets can't get help from the government or other sources because they serve pets and animals are not worth it to our society. 
I would never go to a vet that doesn't care about my animals, but I haven't met many vets who don't truly care.  My wonderful vet who is three hours away (the only one I trust to do surgeries, etc on my babies) will call in prescriptions to my local vet or to the local compounding pharmacy.  She spent a lot of time calling around to pharmacies to see if they had the medication I needed.  And she will spend an hour on the phone talking to me about my babies because I live so far away... without charging me anything!  If that means I pay more when I go in to see her and get my scripts from her, then I'm certainly happy to do so.  I've had to look around, but I've been able to find vets who go above and beyond anywhere I live, and I'm willing to pay for that level of service and care, whether it is added to their office fee or their pharmacy fee. 
But I do get my dogs heartworm and flea/tick from 1800petmeds because we get a 15% discount. 

I have to go to a special vet for my rats. The vet we visit charges $25 office visit for our cats and dogs but when I asked them if they could check my rats they kind of just sneered at me.. I wasn't very pleased. The place the rats go charges me around $50 a visit for EACH rat + the cost of meds for BOTH. It's not cheap. Jesirose, I'm jealous!  I wish I had a vet like that around here. 

Not sure if all of you know this but you can't get Baytril from a human pharmacy.  It's strictly an animal drug and human pharmacies don't carry it.  But you can get doxycycline syrup for half the cost of the doxy solution, and it lasts twice as long too.  I was charged $40 for a bottle of doxycycline powder from my vet, and when I called a human pharmacy, I found out that I would have been charged $20 for the doxy syrup which would have lasted for a month (not two weeks like the doxy powder).

Deb

Completely agree with you.  *points to top* the argument isn't about vet visits, it's about the dispensing fees of medications, a whole different story. 

Ya know if you expected to be able to hand out a bill for all your knowledge, skills and supplies and dont want people to piss and moan, maybe you should have become a MD and not a vet? I dont mind spending the money for my pets, I take it all as part of being responsible, but like healthcare in this country, things need to be affordable. Taking an animal to the vet shouldnt be a privelage to those that can afford it with little thought, services should be available to every income bracket/level.

Im not trying to be nasty, but I do see why people cringe at the cost of a vet visit at times. Its like social workers, they are horridly underpaid and severely overworked most of the time. Most of them do it why? Love of people and wanting to help. Am I suggesting you should live in debt or eat the cost for those not able to afford vet bills? NO, just dont expect to get rich.

I read somewhere that in any business if you don't have people complain about the price, you aren't charging enough. It's just part of business really.