The Cost of Companionship

Growing up, I remember being told to NEVER ask or talk about other people’s financial situations.  This is just one social rule (among many others) that I have to break on a daily basis as a veterinarian.  Nobody likes to talk about the “business” of medicine, but it is a reality.  Medical care carries with it a hefty overhead, and the medical supply companies, landlords, and reference labs don’t care how much a veterinarian loves animals when she can’t pay her bills.

Veterinarians are often blamed for the cost of pet care today compared to years past, but it has much less to do with our (not so) deep pockets, and way more to do with how much the emotional value of the pet has gone up.  After correcting for inflation, the US expenditure on pet-related products and services has grown at FIVE TIMES the rate of growth for the US economy.  I should also mention that veterinary care makes up less than a quarter of that spending.  It isn’t that vets are charging more for what we are doing, we are actually DOING a lot more to keep your pets happy and healthy for as long as possible.

Dogs (in particular) have evolved over the past 30,000 years to be the perfect companion to humans, but it was only recently that we started treating them as surrogate family members.  Many people have (sheepishly) confessed to me that the most profoundly intimate bond in their life is with their pet, and there is no shame in that.  There are even academic programs now that investigate the power and utility of this relationship, which has been shown to have many emotional and physical benefits for humans.

The worst part of my job is watching someone struggle with deciding whether or not to spend a certain dollar amount to save their companion’s life.  Even more often, I see owners having to cut corners on preventive care, which puts their pets at risk, and could end up costing them a lot more in the long-run.  How can we reconcile the emotional value of pets with the very real financial burdens of veterinary care?  We can start by doing a better job of preparing for these costs on day 1 of owning that pet (better yet, several months prior), so the bills don’t feel so, well, burdensome.