"The Medway Handyman" wrote in message
om...
"Harry Bloomfield" wrote in message
k...
We took a dog to a vet on Sunday for him to check out what turned
out to be a much more serious wound than it at first appeared and
paid a bill of £150.

We were given anti-biotics, but not a full course and asked to
return the animal mid week for another check up.

My understanding of anti-biotics is that if a course is started, the
full course should always be given. It seems a little odd therefore,
not to provide a full course on the first visit. Is this normal
procedure or just a method to ensure our return by giving these in
small batches?

I've never had that. There are two possibilities that I can think of.
The simplest is that they gave you all they had in stock. The second
is that the vet was not entirely sure of the best antibiotic for the
condition - the modern approach is to give targeted antibiotics,
rather than broad-band - and wanted to see whether the ones given
were effective before continuing.

The third possibity I can think of it that 'professionals' are very adept
at tucking up the punter. Vets, dentists, opticians, solicitors, estate
agents etc. Except they don't call it "tucking up the punter", they call
it 'profesional services'.

Not content with charging £150 for a wound (it only costs that to have an
NHS ambulance complete with two paramedics & full emergency kit attend a
human FFS) they want to stitch people up with drug prices as well.

Again, not my experience. In many cases, the drugs are the same as used for
humans and would cost the same if you had to buy them from your doctor -
which is why NICE looks at drugs expenditure.

A case in point is that my cat has just had to be put on an inhaler for
asthma. The vet gave me a choice of a cheap inhalation chamber that was
designed for human babies, but will work with animals, or the more expensive
cat specific chamber. Given the number of plastic and silicone mould tools
required for the latter and the probable market size, when compared to the
human baby market, I'm surprised it wasn't even more expensive. She then
looked into the prices of different inhalers and prescribed the cheapest,
recommending that I buy them on the internet, although, until I can get down
to the Chemists, the cat is using one of my partner's spare inhalers.

Colin Bignell