I'm sorry, but vet costs are completely out of whack with reality these days. The truth of the matter is that most people cannot justify spending thousands of dollars on a pet, no matter how much they are loved, and that DOES NOT make them bad or unfit owners. The story quoted $10k to remove a skewer a puppy swallowed, and then pressured the owner give the pup up when they couldn't afford that. Can you not see how that would be viewed as insanely predatory? For profit companies should not be involved in human or animal medicine. Once that cash cow is gone maybe vet school prices will come down to earth.
Most vets I know (I also work for a state school, not a for profit company) are very sympathetic toward very large and expensive bills, and have always been up front about cost in a way that human medicine is not. There's also a myriad of ways they try to reduce bills when they can.
The toll is from folks who aren't spending much smaller amounts of money on life saving procedures.
$10k is nothing if you making half a million dollars a year and have $200k in credit with no balance, because your disposable income is probably $400-450k/yr.
$200 is a ruinous amount of money if you make minimum wage and take the bus to work because your disposable income is very likely negative.
I'm not sure poor people not adopting pets would meaningfully change the rate at which pets are born. It just results in fewer pets being adopted.
Particularly true if shelters fix pets before putting them up for adoption.
Most animals that have been bred as pets over 1000s of years are no longer permitted to live without a human caretaker.
If they can't swing $200 for a life-saving procedure for a pet, I'd still advise them to adopt a pet to provide it a home for the window of time when the animal could happily live without any vet services.
A no-cost (or low-cost) adoption is often a life-saving procedure for an owner-less pet.
I grew up poor, by US standards at least, and everyone around me either adopted their pets from shelters or found them as strays on the street. All my pets have been either strays or from a shelter.
The only exception I can think of from my childhood were fish, I think those almost always came from a pet store, but fish tanks were very uncommon.
Even my Axolotl was a rescue, it was given to me in a Tupperware container full of pond water after its previous owner was unable to take care of it.
If you have anything that would suggest it’s common for people who can’t afford $200 in vet services to buy their pets from breeders, I’m open to learning.
Sorry to be so harsh about it, but your comment lacks basic empathy so I figured I'd give you a little dose of same.
food, water, bedding, the ability to keep it safe, vaccines(they're pretty cheap mostly and often done by animal shelters for free--neutering too).
There are so many pets in shelters who could live good happy lives but no one is there to adopt them.
Better a pet to live with an owner who cant afford their chemo when theyre 14 years old than to be euthanized at 2 years old.
As with everything else we are currently screwing up we could do well to look at what smarter countries are doing.
Having enough supply means that when fuzzball junior has a health problem you don't have to choose between going into hock for $500-$1000 for an emergency vet, paying rent, or waiting a month for your regular vet who is also obliged to bill at a level that will pay costs, and repay their lender plus interest.
This is to say that actual cost of service is even worse than it looks due to the necessity of relying on emergency vets to plug massive hole in supply. This encourages individual practices to price discriminate by offering the same services on an emergency basis for much more which further decreases the already scarce vet hours for non-emergency situations.
All of this makes perfect sense from a market perspective but none of it was normal 20 years ago here nor in most of the world so its not fate its a scrape we have gotten ourselves into.
Will say: In theory it sounds great what you are saying, and for many other areas of life it really is great (I've heard lots of storries from her indicating that it's basically paradise), but that doesn't take away from that people don't understand that having a pet is not a human right but a huge responsibility and a luxury that one needs to understand the consequences of having. Instead of crying for daddy/the government when things inevitably come around that were not in the rosy picture when that puppy looked at you.
This is a weird way to say work together to lay the groundwork for a more functional society. Accountability and recognition that are society is ridiculously poorly constructed are complementary not contradictory. It's humorous that you use as an anecdote your "barely middle class" niece and her complaints devoid of context whereas someone working at a burger joint here might not be able to afford to live inside. Over here she would probably either work a second job or her and her pup would live in her car.
The biggest first step towards sanity would be no longer issuing government backed loans for 400k, making pricing requirements and capacity goals based on prior performance to qualify for one thin dime. They might find the will to fire some of the useless expensive staff that aren't actually teaching kids. do a lot of the basic crap inexpensively online, and kick sports to the curb.
Currently we live in a completely broken market that is literally cause by the distortion of uncle Sam's unlimited funds on the educational market with no concurrent regulation to keep it from blowing everything up. The result of a minority of rich fuckers crying to big daddy government.
> This is a weird way to say work together to lay the groundwork for a more functional society.
I see where you are coming from. You don't need to convince me that the U.S. society with its bizarre incentives is deeply broken. I'm all for strong societal support.
But you also need to realize that offloading lots of responsibility to the government (and thereby the rest of society) has real drawbacks. Sadly many people either take advantage of it (in a bad way) or are just so careless that it just leads to overall worse outcomes. That needs to be acknowledged if you want to discuss fundamental rules for a more functional society. We can't ignore those effects.
If food could only be purchased with food stamps and there was societal pressure to offer more and more money indefinitely even if for all the best reasons one would soon find that a can of corn cost $12. Any complaints about regulating grocery stores in such a broken market entirely miss the point. There was never a functional market in that instance to protect. We should either stop pouring in billions or we should put stipulations on performance and price. Doing nothing until the can of corn is $15 doesn't seem tenable.
A cost-benefit analysis could try make a reasonable argument for subsidized animal welfare.
If you can’t afford to take basic care of a pet, don’t get one. Period.
Life is already harsh enough to not add more misery to it for someone else.
Caring for a pet has a cost. The obvious cost is its nutrition, but its health costs must be accounted for as well in the decision to acquire a pet. No matter if you pay a lot for the pet or get it for free, now you have full responsibility for this life. It lives in your captivity, so it's your responsibility to ensure it's being cared for. This is not nature, it can't just live on its own and take care of itself as it would do in nature. It's essentially your prisoner, even if it's rare to see anybody understand that, so you need to provide to its needs. Including health needs. And that incurs a cost. Not _if_ it's needed, it's _when_ it's needed. If you can't "swing" that, then your decision to own a pet was an unbelievably irresponsible one.
The hate shouldn't go towards the vet charging that money for treatment, but towards this irresponsible pet-owner-who-shouldn't-be-one. It's irresponsible mainly towards the pet, but even towards the vet, as the original article demonstrates quite well.
https://fortune.com/recommends/banking/57-percent-of-america...
Ordinary responsible people are going to find themselves deciding what care they can provide for their pet both because of financial challenges personal and societal that weren't evident when they got the pet and because its getting expensive as fuck.
Telling people you need to be middle class in America today to have a pet seems fairly inadequate.
Yes obviously people should not buy things they can't afford. If that means you can't have a pet or a 90k pickup truck, or the shoes you want or whatever then so be it.
Totally bizarre that you see this as some sort of gotcha to phrase it this way
You must mean half a million after taxes.
There are a lot of people on this very site making 500k+ pre-tax. You're going to be taking home 300ish after taxes in that case, and it's not entirely unreasonable to "only" have 150ish for savings/investments/disposable income after your housing and living costs are taken out of that
If someone has $12k+ to spend per month and won't spend $10k to save their pet's life, they're an asshole IMO
Pick a FAANG you don't feel too bad about, hit the LeetCode hard for a few months, then go work there for 5 years. You can save up $750k+, which is enough to leave Silicon Valley and eke out a barebones retirement somewhere in the real world (~$30k/year at a 4% safe withdrawal rate)
lmao
There is no way someone making $500k a year has $400k of disposable income. Taxes will most likely be $120k; and other expenses will take up a sizeable about of that income.
More likely that person will have $100k or less of truly "disposable" income. That $10k vet bill comes out of the budget for a high-end car, or out of the vacation budget, or a landscaping project gets delayed until next year.
This, BTW, is why people who "have money" either buy pet insurance, or put the pet down. Many people who "have money" only have it because they are very careful about what they spend it on.
I just took my cat in for an emergency (little idiot ate plastic and we had to see if she had a block in her when she was continuing to vomit blood) and got her examined, a shot of anti-nausea medication, imaging of her gi tract, and some bland food to take home (which had to be special as she's allergic to chicken protein) for $215. I thought that was pretty damn reasonable honestly.
I assume you must be an expert in the cost structure of operating a veterinary practice in that location, at that time, in order to determine a predatory and non predatory price.
If you are not, I am not sure how you can make any claim about the prices.
>For profit companies should not be involved in human or animal medicine.
What kind of quality of life do you think veterinarians and doctors deserve? Should they be able to buy a Mercedes? C Class or S Class? Should they be able to buy a home in the better school district? How many square feet?
These questions are relevant for determining the predatori-ness of the doctors’ prices. Even more relevant is whether or not you want the top caliber people spending years studying one of the most complex machines. Or they could go study how to deliver ads to people.
I miss the days when vets got into the business to run small practices for a reasonable profit and middle class lifestyle. Few of them wanted mercedes money . It's kind of gross to think modern vet medicine is making vast sums off of pet owner's worst days.
I do, and going on about this (incorrectly) on an article about a veterinarian suicide crisis is unseemly. This isn't about you. If vets are so greedy and amoral, why are they committing suicide, for all the reasons listed in the article, at 4-8 times the rate of the general population?
You might find it interesting and beneficial to learn more about this topic firsthand. Vet practices, shelters, and vet schools often operate in coordination and are always looking for volunteers and donations. You may find more understanding and empathy with more exposure to the people this area.
I understand you probably feel differently. Frankly you and I will probably not ever agree on this topic as we have different world views.
But yes, labor should have some means to be controlled for price, so that people cannot be underpaid or overpaid (as many are).
Unless you have specifics, what value does your proposal have? It is trivial to wish for world peace.
I'm sure no amount of specifics would convince you that's a good idea, just as no amount of your specifics would probably convince me otherwise. And that's fine.
I am under no obligation to provide you "value" in my posts.
"You predatory monster!"
Do you think even for a moment through what you're saying, or is this just reflexive on your end?
Also, in what world is a median annual income of $100k, for a job with expensive and long training, "mercedes money"? If you have actual evidence of most vets making "vast sums", maybe it'd a good time to share that.
I'm not opposed to people making money and having a comfortable life, but the fact that private equity is capitalizing on vet clinics is telling.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31728350 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36313967
In this specific case being discussed, it does seem the vet business was acquired by a PE company a few years ago:
https://www.mainebiz.biz/article/portland-animal-health-star...
Note that the vet doctors themselves may have ownership in the company itself.
The other option is that advanced surgeries for animals are so costly, and the proportion of people who have the ability to pay so low, that there does not exist sufficient demand for a new vet to want to open a new hospital. In short, pet owners simply cannot afford all the pet healthcare they want.
You don't have to be an expert when you can compare vet prices in US and in other parts of the world. And unlike human healthcare, vet is not subsidized anywhere, so the comparison is fair.
With the price tag of 10K$ I'd say it would be worth to take a flight to Mexico, other LatAm countires, or even Eastern Europe to pay tenth of the price for the same operation.
What if tort costs are higher in one country than another, requiring higher insurance premiums? Real estate is more valuable, resulting in higher rents/mortgages? Labor costs higher due to more stringent labor laws/less supply of labor. The list goes on and on.
As far as I am aware, this does not apply to a veterinary business. The article also says it was $10k for emergency services at a vet hospital, including the aftercare.
What are the labor costs of having highly qualified people, presumably in low supply, on call to provide these services? What are the costs of supplies like medicine, and malpractice insurance (if that applies)?
It is how the world works. It is the mechanism which the markets use to signal more supply of something is needed (or less demand).
If you want me to study advanced biology for 10+ years and then have me work at odd hours of the day and night to be ready to perform surgery, you need to pay up, or reduce the other options I have for earning money which give me a higher quality of life.
It goes without saying that a vet should have higher than average income considering the length and cost of study and responsibility etc. Not at all trying to say that they're greedy.
> The incident involved a four-month-old German Shepherd puppy who'd swallowed a skewer and needed emergency surgery life-saving surgery. The cost of the complicated procedure and after care was close to $10,000 – more than the owner could afford. As a last resort, to avoid euthanasia, the clinic offered her the option to surrender the puppy to a new owner who could cover the cost.
What is a reasonable price? Unless someone is familiar with pricing from multiple vendors for some period of time, how could one know a reasonable price?
Were time not an issue, they could probably take a trip to Mexico, get the operation done for maybe a few hundred dollars, and come back home, all for much less money than the vet was asking. And the reason I think that's particularly relevant is that it's not like the underlying costs really change. It's like what led to the creation of SpaceX. Elon was wondering why it cost billions of dollars to launch a rocket to space whose materials cost a negligible fraction of that. And it turns out there was no answer, which is why SpaceX dominates space launches now.
If you can’t find someone else to sell to you for less, then yes. Barring broken markets such as due to regulatory capture, etc.
> The point I make is that you might not be able to tell a reasonable price, per se.
>But you can generally tell an unreasonable price.
These strike me as conflicting statements, otherwise I don’t know what per se means.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37846041
> And the reason I think that's particularly relevant is that it's not like the underlying costs really change.
>So developing world costs tend to give you a 'raw materials' cost, where all that's left is labor + profit.
Why are labor costs not underlying costs? How about liability insurance? Real estate?
The point of looking at 'raw materials' cost is that if the costs on top of said raw materials becomes more than the cost of doing business elsewhere (such as in a different country), the one would be wise to do just that. This is the whole reason things like medical tourism exists.
It's not like other countries are getting their machines, medicines, and so on for that much less. It's just they're able to reduce the cost of everything on top of raw materials to the point that one can afford to take a 'holiday' half way around the world, get their issue fixed, and make it back all for less, often vastly less, than it'd cost to do stateside.
Euthanasia might be the only humane option in an x-ray-and-pliers outfit not staffed and equipped to perform such an heroic sort of intervention in the timeframe it would take to succeed.
One thing that does stand out to me is the extreme shortage of people willing to become veterinarians, even at these prices. It seems like regardless of the pricing on the retail end, capable young people considering modern veterinary life are sizing up the entire financial, emotional, educational, and lifestyle bargain and not finding the payoff to be worth it.
That said, I am sympathetic to the idea that modern veterinary practice has strayed too far from the way it’s done in lesser-resourced settings. Maybe it is more appropriate to set aside advanced and expensive medical techniques in favor of more cheaply-educated practitioners, more conventional business hours, simpler tools and supplies, more frequent recourse to euthanasia, and so on.
The blessing and the curse of modern medicine, no? It’s bad enough to have to face death when it feels inevitable, when “all that can be done to save them” is relatively simple and well-understood. Knowing that the same situation might be survivable under different circumstances—with more money, or in a place with the right practitioner, or if we’d just had this particular exotic antivenom in stock, or if the line had been shorter that night, or if we could hire some bioengineers and a lab to custom-tailor a treatment to puppy’s genes… the same death then comes with a lingering feeling of guilt over the possibility that more could have been done.
Quite the opposite I expect you'd see dramatically less euthanasia in the developing world (though a quick search unsurprisingly turned up very little in the way of data). But I think the logic should be clear enough. Pets make everybody's lives better and more enjoyable, but very few people could afford to even think about dropping $10,000 on a puppy. Those prices are just a fast-track to mass euthanasia and depressed vets.
You should open a vet office then. Sounds like you’re well equipped to undercut competition and still make a hefty profit!
Or maybe you’re just making things up. Because we’re talking about an emergency open and close surgery to remove what’s probably a long sharp object with puncturing of the stomach. On a small animal. On immediate short notice (cancel everything else!). It’s going to be difficult with multiple doctors. And it’s going to require a lot of post surgery care.
$10,000 feels high at first glance but consider the size of the skewer compared to a small animal. There is likely damage done to other areas including major internal hemorrhaging which is not super straight-forward to track down completely (even in humans). If the skewer was single-use bamboo (which I suspect given how much wood will retain food smell and how puppies love destroying garbage cans), the puppy would have likely chewed on it a bit causing splintered mess internally.
This would result in a multi-hour procedure with at least 2 surgical staff (surgeon and tech) and anesthesiologist (due to the complicated nature of this, we can’t have the animal regurgitating as well as active life support monitoring). In addition to the standard tools, they would be using X-rays, dyes, internal (dissolvable) sutures, etc. Internal organs would be mended, stomach fluid would need to be removed from the abdominal cavity, and there would be at least 12 hours of monitoring post op.
Expensive, yes, but I don’t think it’s that unreasonable unfortunately.
TFA links another article explaining the $10,000 bill is a combination of $3,000 of completed tests the original owner had already paid, the surgical procedure, and aftercare costs.
1) The loss of industry support for large animal vets
2) The loss of state funding for veterinary schools, which has put pressure on the one remaining dial available to those schools, which is tuition. This is a systemic problem that extends way beyond vet schools, but is particularly obvious there
If anyone could perform veterinary medicine out of their garage, I imagine costs would come down significantly.
I don't buy it. If their kid needed a couple thousand dollars to live, a lot more people would be able to scrounge it up. If they can't do the same for their pet, maybe they actually do love their pet less ... and that's OK.
While I agree that many (most) people would make it work if it were for a child, I wouldn't use the insanity of the US's human healthcare bills to justify anything. It's also insane and a travesty that you can walk into your hospital and walk out with multi-thousand dollar charges you cannot pay. Both can be terrible and unjustifiable.
On the other hand, your pet will die in your lifetime, unless you are very old or die unexpectedly. So most people are probably prepared for this emotionally on some level.
I'd argue not having the means to deal with emergency situations would make someone unfit to own a pet.
I get that circumstances can change and costs increase, but I also feel too many people assume a pet doesn't cost much or isn't much of a comitment.
You're right that the costs are crazy, and not taking it into account when deciding to take or keep a pet is irresponsible.
I agree people should plan for more pet-related costs than they do, but, as technology progresses, there doesn't seem to be a ceiling on the amount you _could_ spend to save a pet.
In my case, we have always taken in rescue animals. So the choice is between leaving the pet at shelter or a life in a good home with some limited options when it comes to end-of-life care. I think the latter option is more humane.
So it isn't a big $10K+ or bust argument. But the sad fact of the matter is very few pet owners assume ownership while planning for the potential bad days and the extra financial burden and responsibility that they should feel when they take on pet ownership.
If in practice owning a dog or cat will also cost 10k at times, it's only reasonable to take the same approach and consider owning a them as a pretty high luxury, until the costs effectively come down.
Or every pet owner gets to your level of dedication and will assist their pet and the vet when tough times come and hard decisions need to be made. I personally wouldn't have the guts so I'll stick with my goldfishes.
Sometimes people's finances change though, and then (assuming it wasn't serious money mismanagement) I think it's cruel to say they should give up their pet.
Pet insurance should be front-loaded, so you have to pay a lot the first few months, but if you stop paying you get to keep the insurance at least for a while.
And once you have any vet record of anything other than a routine wellness check, you're basically locked into your policy because if you try and switch providers, you'll run into pre-existing condition limitations, which are quite difficult to understand or predict. This is also difficult because not only will your insurance go up simply for your pet getting older, the pet insurance companies are constantly going through rate changes, as they adjust risk profiles for breeds or adjust to vet care inflation. Depending on what state you live in, these rate adjustments could be completely uncapped.
Even if you don't switch, many insurance providers won't write new policies for pets over certain age thresholds.
Basically pet ownership would require either 10k on the side or registration and justification to get proper insurance.
Medical insurance distorts the market by disconnecting the payer from the costs. It will do the same in veterinary medicine if it hasn't already.
That goes for fish, dogs or tarantulas.
There doesn't exist a duty to spend unreasonably large quantities of resources on saving any particular animal's life, so not being able to afford that doesn't make someone unfit to own a pet. If a pet has cancer, it's okay to perform a complex surgery that could save it, but it's also okay to let it die.
Animals aren’t humans. We do the best we can.
There's no vet industrial complex, so no administrative/insurance/legal parasitic overhead like in human medicine (in the US).
Techs (for states that require technician certification, it's a two year degree) do a lot of the work with pets. There's often more than one technician per doctor. That reduces costs. Doctors are still needed because, unsurprisingly, cases can have a lot of nuance that requires significant training to see.
I'm sympathetic toward animals, but there's a lot of them that are lucky to have anyone take them in at all, and a lot that aren't that lucky. If someone wants to get an animal some level of care without there being someone with a postgraduate degree to supervise (instead of no care), that sounds like a good thing. They could always be referred to a more qualified vet if needed.
For the routine tasks, eg flea medication or bloodwork, a vet isn't helpful. For difficult tasks like surgery, a vet is too expensive.
I'd rather use a quack in every case.
You obviously haven't seen where private equity has been buying up private vet practices
Seems like the usual suspects have realized that there's a ton of money to be extracted by the veterinary industry and we're seeing the direct (hey, our CFO did some analysis and we can raise prices 500% and only impact sales 20%!) and indirect (hey, since there's a lot of money in this industry now, we've developed a new veterinary surgical instrument that improves outcomes 10% for only 20x the cost!) effects of that process.
And in this case, veterinarians are caught in the middle since they don't have a powerful cartel to protect them like human doctors; they end up with all of the stress and none of the profits.
In the last few years have seen several times how things go when private equity buys a dental or vet practice (or even plumbing) . The workers there are suddenly under a quota to make money, have less time but more stress, costs to the customer go up. The only beneficiaries are the private equity company. Everybody else loses big time.
My wife is a vet and I hear about this often.
From the vet's perspective, if the owner gives up the puppy then they don't have to put the puppy down. Putting down a puppy is heart-wrenching.
You can't give out free medical care, she regularly gives as many discounts as she's allowed to give away, even some she's not supposed to, especially for cases like that. But in the end, the choice is A: put the puppy down or B: do the procedure for free but then the owner has to give up the animal.
When presented that choice it's obvious you should try and convince the owner not to put the animal down.
It wouldn’t make any sense otherwise. It would be a lose lose for an animal shelter to receive this deeply fragile animal and the vet to do this expensive surgery for free.
You get a wide range of clients at a vet clinic, some people are very nice and deal honestly, but there are a ton of people out there, I would say they are "less than savory" characters who recklessly adopt a lot of pets (like 5 dogs, 5 cats, and no money to pay for any bills) and will abuse these policies all day.
Likely the vet simply knew someone with deep enough pockets who loves dogs and was willing to take one for a well above market fee. It doesn't seem unethical to me that person only wants to save dogs they own.
I wish I didn't know such arrangements are happening.
Every single one I know has a small menagerie of broken animals.
Like there is a shelter in the city that will pay for medical bill and take the dog.
I do sort of see the logic. Part of responsible pet ownership is being able to keep your animal alive and healthy, if you don’t have the resources to do that then you maybe aren’t ready to be a pet owner. They make insurance to cover this exact thing, called pet insurance. If you can’t afford to have pet insurance and you can’t afford to pay for the medical bills then you can’t afford to have a pet. There are other people who will provide the care that the animal needs, but at that point they will become the owner.
I understand that this sounds heartless WRT the owner, I didn’t make these rules this is just how it works at my wife’s clinic and that’s the justification I have heard from the shelter and the company that owns the clinic.
Not trying to hold you accountable for the practice of course, but it seems like you might know
Why go through the trouble of rehoming the pet when it already has a home that loves it..?
Is this asserting a legal or professional requirement? Or rather a "rule of business"?
If you can’t afford medical costs for your pet then your pet will die if something bad happens.
Likewise if you take some magical fairy “society owes me taking care of my pet” then you’re going to be as disappointed as if you walk into a Chanel store and demand a free purse.
Pets are a luxury, not a fucking right. It’s not anyone’s job to keep it alive if you can’t afford insurance or costs.
I couldn't find any insurance that made better sense than just putting $30/mo into a money market account at 5.25%. The way the policies are written, they clearly are there to make money on people who are buying piece of mind comfort over looking at the reality of the costs.
Turnover 987 =
Goods sold 96
+ services 776
+ ‘health club’ 113
Staff costs 442 (50% of turnover)
Lease payments 37
Profit 69.3 (~7% of turnover)
I don’t know how those numbers look to you. To me, they don’t seem insane and I’m not sure the difference would matter much — I doubt the person unwilling to pay 10k would be willing to pay 8.2k. Also, I would guess that sort of surgery to be lower margin than routine things, though maybe competition drives it the other way.
Yeah, the schools are going to be expensive just as colleges are. Similar to med school, you're looking at high costs of educators, equipment, etc.
Just put in the effort to find a good vet, build a relationship, and trust them give you good advice.
I'm not saying this to you, but this has been a terrible post on HN to read, the worst of the community is on display. Lots of confidently wrong people that are very quick to see the worst in others.
This industry, like so many others, has become a target for venture capital and consolidation. It's very quickly on it's way to becoming monopolized. Which makes headlines like this to me very interesting, because I assume they're designed to push people out of the profession and practice ownership and just sell it out to a firm when they come knocking.
> For profit companies should not be involved in human or animal medicine.
What is self ownership but an attempt to earn a profit? The issue isn't attempting to earn, the issue is the attempt to fully monopolize the market. I wish people saw through this more often.
It's not like it was 1/10th the cost a while back and has suddenly became exploited by Big Veterinary or something. It was always expensive and you just wouldn't even ask unless you were especially wealthy or were unusually willing to sacrifice.
What's changed (perhaps for the better) is the sense that pets are worth the sacrifice. If you're younger or from a more wealthy background, you may not have a good intuition how much more accepted it was that pets (and people) simply don't get all the care that they might. The idea that intense medical intervention is a right for people, let alone animals, is actually pretty new.
Vets are NOT being predatory just because their work continues to be expensive.
As someone that used to think the same way as you, and then got to see other side of the business (my wife is a Veterinarian who runs an urgent care facility) —— it’s easy to think the way you do without seeing the costs incurred on the other side.
There is enough wealth created in our economy to cover these costs, and more, but heaven forbid a company not make more profit this year than last.
Every dollar in the economy is only 70k/person and the government already takes 28k/person.
Why would I ever want to pay exorbitant prices for your pet. I don't even want to do it for mine.
And a lot of drugs are re-purposed from human medicine. Syringes, IVs, antibiotics. The manufacturers are not giving vets a discount just because it's being used in a rabbit. You just never see those prices for yourself because insurance hides it. The vets have to pass it on to you because their business is not a charity.
If you don't want top quality care for your pet and you don't value the skill and knowledge of a trained professional, there's plenty of bargain basement vets that are willing to cut corners.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016517812... shows in 3.3 that not only is the veterinarian rate more than 2x that of physicians, but the upper end of the 95% CI for physicians is below the lower end of the 95% CI for veterinarians. It doesn't appear to be anywhere close.
That being said I can’t find conclusive data elsewhere. Most research doesn’t narrow down to jobs neatly. I’ve found number suggesting suicide rates of 200-400% that of the general pop which is in the same ballpark above and blow. So ymmv.
Idk anything about Austria in these regards either way. But as I said, cursory searches for doctor specific stats put it in the same ballpark as those cited for vets.
My spouse and I had our dog euthanized last year because we did the calculations/justifications and the costs and risks of surgery (likely cancer and organ failure, per the ultrasound) didn't justify keeping our family member alive for perhaps a few more months. The experience changed my perspective about pet ownership/stewardship in general: unless I really need an animal companion or a working animal (e.g. herding), I will never own another pet. I find it a luxury I can do without. I've had three dogs die in my lap now, and that's enough.
Visiting his grave in the back pasture on walks with my young daughter has opened up regular conversations about death, though, which I see as an upside. She was there wfor the funeral and touched his cold ear before we buried him. She asks a lot of questions and often wants the story of our dead dog's later life and eventual death, and after some consideration and kind words to the memory of our dog (I add no religious spin, just that his "spark of life" is gone and his body is being digested by other living beings underground, a fate for myself which I am absolutely fine with), because it feels good to say these kind words even though I am not under the illusion he's listening, we carry on walking.
>The experience changed my perspective about pet ownership/stewardship in general: unless I really need an animal companion or a working animal (e.g. herding), I will never own another pet. I find it a luxury I can do without. I've had three dogs die in my lap now, and that's enough.
I understand not wanting to put yourself through the pain of loss, and have felt that too. Sometimes I don't want a pet because I feel the good times aren't worth the pain of parting. However, you went on to call it a luxury, which confused me. Is that because you will have to pay for the luxury, or because the animal will?
I've never had a pet I thought had a bad life, and it sounds like you were a good owner, so I don't get what the downside is.
In my position, would you encourage your child to chase their dream? Or would you be comfortable telling them every few weeks until they gave up that you don’t think they should be a vet? I’m asking in earnest because I’m torn with my desire to be encouraging and positive and tell her to chase a dream, with my desire not to set her up for misery or potentially suicide.
Can't you do both? Let her know about the serious downsides (perhaps don't "repeat every few weeks until she gives up") and if she chooses it anyway, encourage her. This is her decision to make, not yours. She will be responsible for the consequences, not you.
> She’s 8. She’s not mentaly capable of being responsible for making future career decisions.
She's 8, she doesn't have to make future career decisions yet. When the time comes, it's her decision to make.
When having the cat put down, my first thought was for the cat and my personal sadness. My second thought was, wait, you folks do this for a living?
Maybe don't charge insane amounts if having to put down a pet makes you suicidal.
To be honest, at this point, between how hard it is to get into vet school, the debt load, and how you're signing up for crushing compassion fatigue your whole life, and a career of hoping someone will pay for a procedure to save their pet's life while being braced for "I guess we should put them down..." every day, I wouldn't tell someone I cared for to become a vet.