Petition to prevent the charging for Veterinary Prescriptions

[manja]

Not sure whether how many of you are aware but in October the 3 year ban on vets charging to for prescriptions comes to an end. Whilst I am happy to purchase treatment drugs through my vet, maintenance drugs such as Frontline Spray, Bute (my horse has sachet per day for maintenance) etc are cheaper through other sources. Whilst my vet has no issue supplying me with a prescription, I believe many will go back to charging and the guidelines of no more than £2-50 charge have been ignored in the past and will be again - in some cases charges could go as high as £10 to dissuade people to ask for prescriptions.

Therefore if you would like to see this ban continue, please sign the online petition:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/petprescription

Thanks

 

[Gamebird]

Be careful what you wish for!

At the moment vets make a good proportion of their income from the mark-ups on drug sales and proportionately undercharge for their professional opinion/time (just think how a freebie 'could you just look at this while you're here' on 6 or 7 visits a day adds up - at ten minutes a time that's an hour of unpaid work a day!).

As people drift to the on-line pharmacies for drugs (and these can buy in bulk, getting huge discounts from manufacturers hence they can sell cheaper) the income from drug sales for vets drops hugely. So the only way to recoup this missing revenue is to increase the fees for profesional services thus your visit charge, examination charge etc. have to go up in price!

Whether it's in form of a prescription charge or addition to another part of your bill you'll pay for it somewhere along the line!

 

[manja]

Agree but a lot of vets have already increased prices to account for this. I am not against charging a small admin fee but in the past this was not adhered to and the charges were large, and hence the ban was brought into force.

Some vets, mine luckily, are fine about maintenance drugs being purchased through online as they recognise that they haven't got the overheads. I still say that a mark of almost 50% in some cases is too much and hence why it encourages me to support the petition.

At the end of the day, it's everyones individual choice whether they think prescriptions should be free/small admin charge - hence the beauty of a petition.

 

[star]

petition wont work - we will be able to go back to charging for them but there is to be a limit of £15 put on it from what I've heard in the vet press so far. Hopefully most vets wont charge that much, but it does take a few mins to write the script, print it, sign it etc so we should be able to charge something for it.

 

[kickandshout]

if you haven't been paying for your prescriptions so far you are very very lucky !!!!

i have a dog who requires heart pills and without the savings i make through online drugs i would have been forced to make the decision to put her to sleep.
its still cheaper but every 4 months i have to pay £12 for an 'administration fee' apparently it not for the prescription.
I'm afraid your petitions too late
but what choice do we have if we want to keep our pets alive when they require expensive drugs to live !!!!