The newest Heartworm Veterinarian Scam is better understood when the new vaccination rule of every three years took place. Because I do not believe anything someone in the veterinarian or any other profession tells me I decided to bring this to the attention to those people who do believe everything they hear or read. Thirty years ago many of us knew that dogs were being over vaccinated and despite the “law” many people either did not vaccinate on a regular basis or in some cases not at all. Then after a long hard fight we finally won the battle and now they are only required every three years. This law has had a financially devastating repercussion on veterinary practices.

If you take the extremely low end of any veterinarian practice and using easy numbers say that practice has a total of 1, 200 pets. When the law said you had to vaccinate every year let’s say only 600 of those pets received shots. The average vaccinations on the low end are $45.00. (Excludes the scary $25.00 vaccination clinic.) Add that together and you have an income of $27,000.00 a year just to vaccinate pets. Some offices charge additional fees for the office visit on top of the vaccinations. Many of us knew as soon as the 3-year vaccination was in place the next thing was going to be a raise in office visit fees. Why? How do you replace that banked on income every year? That is over an $80,000.00 business loss in that time period. Not surprisingly all of a sudden office visits hit the $50.00 mark just to walk in the door. Interestingly enough for those of us without health insurance know that to walk into a human doctors office, the office visit is $55.00. It would be nice to know the veterinarian justification for those prices.

There were two additional financial debacles the veterinarian community was hit with next. Instead of a heartworm test every year to be able to purchase the heartworm medications it was changed to every two years. Most people, even those who do not believe in vaccinations would be on the phone making an appointment for their pet/s immediately to get that test done when heartworm came to Colorado. Secondly the online pet stores captured the medication market. The latest report is that online places have taken 62% of heartworm sales away from vets.

It is a toss up which was the largest financial blow. You can purchase the heartworm medication for almost half in some cases online of what veterinarian’s charge you for the exact medication of which there are only two major companies. Realizing they are losing money again they switched to the fear tactic of which I heard the same story from every vet office I spoke with. They all said that if you do not purchase from them and if your dog gets heartworm the company does pay for the treatment if the dog does contract it. Naturally knowing this was a lie I called both companies to verify my accuracy. For future reference the companies will only pay for the heartworm treatment if the dog has been on heartworm the ENTIRE 12 MONTHS and they do not care if you purchased the product from the vet. Unless you and your pet travel out of state there is not one flea that survives winter with freezing temperatures and snow. Oddly many veterinarians only suggest 6-8 months out of the year in states such as Colorado. That in itself is not only rather fascinating but contradictory.

The second and newest money grubbing panic in the veterinarian community now involves the heartworm medication refill itself. The test is good for two years. The prices range from $20.00 - $25.00 which if you average that and take $22.50 that only comes out to $11.25 once a year for the blood work. Armed with that you could go to one of the online places, order the medication, they will call your vet’s office and in about five days you have the heartworm medication needed and not go to the vet for the next two years excluding emergencies or illness. But Wait! Once again there is a huge money loss. People are buying for almost half of what vet offices charge for the medications and the pets do not have to go in every year for the test. Excluding the loss on the medications let us just take our 600 pets out of the 1,200 above. Take the middle of the road blood test at $22.50 by 600 pets your office has just lost $13,500.00 on top of the $27,000.00 for lack of yearly shots. So how do we recoup that financial big time loser? Easy and simple if you are unethical as many veterinarians are starting to become.

Starting the second year of heartworm medication I receive a phone call from the online company saying the vet will not let them refill the prescription. I call the vet office only to hear that since they have not seen the dog in 12 months they cannot allow it to be refilled. I call back and the second tech tells me sorry, it’s the law and if you bring him in for an office visit so one of the vet’s can do an exam we can authorize it for you. Knowing this is an out and out lie, again to verify my accuracy, I make two phone calls. There is no law in Colorado that states your dog has to be seen once a year after the heartworm blood test has come back negative for a refill. Additionally there is no medical illness aside from current and active heartworm that would prevent any pet from taking heartworm medication that is going to be seen with just a pokey the pet visit. It was also pointed out that it is solely up to the person, even if the dog had cancer or some other medical issue, if the person wants the pet on heartworm.

I call back again and ask what exactly is this vet going to do to check my dog of which I have already paid the office visit and blood test last year? They are going to stick a known inaccurate thermometer in his ear to get an inaccurate temperature, listen to his heart which I already do, look in his eyes and tell me he is starting to get cataracts that I can clearly see on my own even with my cataracts, and feel for lumps which I also already do. The response was I am sorry the law says we have to. I point out that I have verified there is no such law and they are lying, get put on hold only to get another tech that admits that is just the way they do things in their office. In two weeks over 60 clients have told me the exact same story, the vet will not authorize a refill unless they bring the pet back in for the average $50.00 visit.

This is how the finances work out and since all offices have a different markup on the actual heartworm medication that is left out. This uses the very low end of 1,200 pets per clinic and being generous cutting that in half to an office only seeing 600 pets per year which in turn comes out to 50 pets a month or a little over 12 pets per a 5 day work week.

Yearly vaccination loss	$27,000.00
Heartworm test loss	$13,500.00
Office visit loss	$30,000.00
Total	$70,500.00

To make you bring in your pet on the second year into the heartworm medication to subsidize vet office financial loss is nothing short of criminal. As a matter of fact if this was a human doctor they could be taken to court for unethical practice. Unfortunately since this involves “just animals” and people do not question things and believe everything they are told, this type of unethical practice will continue. What this new trend is really called is lying about an animal to a client for the sake of the almighty dollar. Many of the clients, myself included are looking for new vets. We are rather perplexed that veterinarians are willing to watch people leave their practice who would be with them for 10 years or more because they opt for being unethical. Put in even more simple terms, can we all say.....

Money grubbing bastards

(Note on author: The advantage of opinions is they cannot be wrong and they cannot be right. Consequently all written material is strictly my opinion based on over 30 years working with animals. I do not believe in “experts” for one finds out quickly that there is always someone who is smarter, better educated and a wider life experience. If I was an expert and knew everything I would opt to be dictator of the world, not working with animals. I do not believe in statistics since for every con argument there are equal pro arguments to challenge those statistics. Consequently rarely, if ever do I use them.)