Not unlike the human side of things, veterinary health insurance is going to come on, and become a “thing” and that’s great. Clients secure services and get reimbursed by the insurance company, not unlike the old days of human medicine.
Then veterinary corporations will recognize that ‘filing for the client’ is an advantage they have over the independent. The independent Vet won’t have a central office / corporate structure that allows a full time insurance filer. By offering the convenience of “we’ll file for you” to their customers, more business will be pulled away from the independent. That’s the not the consumer’s problem.
The customers are suddenly having to get ‘approved’ for procedures and treatments.
The problem is that as soon as the Vets start filing for the customer, the relationship gets six-degrees-of-separation and the insurance company starts “allowing” payouts of a certain prescribed size, interval and frequency. Reimbursement limits that would be hotly contested by the client, but the Vets (like human physicians of yesteryear) will roll over on. Eventually, veterinarians (like human physicians and hospitals) will be supplicant to the whims of the insurance companies. As will the customers who are suddenly having to get ‘approved’ for procedures and treatments.
And that all begins when the Vets start filing claims on behalf of the clients. And that, dear souls, is as inevitable as every other gimmick that’s going to come out of Veterinary-shareholder medicine.
Doc Johnson
