So, I grumbled the other day about having two sick pups and $450 in vet bills.
When I had taken the little pup in for that last visit, the vet had mentioned that he'd like to do a nasal swab and see what organisms were in the kennel cough outbreak that was going around. He said that if that vaccine maker approved it, they could send in the swab to the vaccine maker at no cost to me and they'd culture it. He said it would help them get a better handle on what was circulating and the vaccine maker could see what kind of coverage the vaccine had. I told him I was majoring in epidemiology in grad school focusing on infectious disease, so I was all for trying to give them a leg up on getting a handle on this bug. He said great, then he mentioned that if it turns out that the culture grows something supposed to be covered by the vaccine, the vaccine maker would reimburse me for the vet bill. He said that never really happens, and it always grows something else, but it was possible.
When I told my mom about that part later she asked if I though the vaccine maker would actually be honest about what grew. I said it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't disclose that, but the fact that they wanted swabs sent in at least meant they would use that information to hopefully make better vaccines.
So vet left a message on my phone to get in touch with him. In the message he said that the little pup's culture grew a parainfluenza virus, one that's covered by the nasal vaccine Ellie got recently and the injectable one she had within the last year. So they vaccine maker was going to reimburse me for her vet bill. I'm listening to the vet bill and about fell over. I was thinking, maybe I could see if we could swab the big pup too and get his bills reimbursed. Well, the message kept going and the vet said that even though Bandit wasn't tested "they've also agreed to cover Bandit's vet bills, and if you can bring in his bill from the emergency vet service they will pay that as well."
So, that's really awesome to get that money back, because things were really tight this month. Also, pretty awesome of the vaccine maker to be honest about it.