Is your veterinarian pushing credit cards?
I can say mine is not, but according to National Public Radio and the Attorney General of New York, veterinarians are the latest group banging the easy-credit gong.
Cuomo's investigation focuses on health care credit cards, which he claims claims health care professionals pressure consumers into applying for. If the consumer puts the charges on the card, the provider gets paid within a few days. And, according to Cuomo, at least one card company gives practitioners a rebate of the fee they’re charged to offer the cards based on how much they generate in sales.
Although complaints about dentists predominate, consumer advocates say veterinary practices come in for their share of criticism, too.
The cards can be tempting to cash-strapped consumers. They often offer zero-interest loans during a promotional period of six months to more than a year.
But if the consumer doesn’t pay off the bill during that time, interest in excess of 25 percent is typically charged on the full amount, going back to the original date the service was provided.
Right. Got that? The vet is paid immediately, and that's the chief concern of the vets pushing these credit cards.
So what if you end up getting hit with a 25% interest rate for a multi-thousand dollar bill to prop up a diseased cat or dog?
But of course, some might argue that this is a service. Which, I suppose, it is.
But does the service come with wise counseling that gets people to come to term with serious illness and the inevitability of pet death?
Or does the vet think his or her job is to be neutral there, but absolutely proactive about easy-credit rip-offs and extraordinary interventions on a 14-year old cat and 13-year old dog?
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1 comment:
Pet owners need to be smart consumers.
My dogs see a couple of vets regularly. When one of my dogs had an entire Minnesota smorgasbord of expensive health problems my regular vet not only sold me his medications at cost but also showed me how to administer the injectables myself.
My regular vet and an ortho vet we see also give me deep discounts (25 to 50%) on care for foster dogs.
The other clinic in town is blindly profit driven and I spit on them. When I first moved here they charged me over $100 to fill out health certificates on a pair of healthy dogs they'd seen less than two weeks before. In the past I had paid $15 to $20 for this courtesy.
This is the same clinic that charges something like $1,500 to do a high tech laser spay surgery that leaves the young bitches I've seen scabby and scarred from breastbone to pubis. Local farm/pet vet does a generic $80 knife job that leaves a short, clean incision that typically heals without a mark. Guess where my girls go...
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