Health Care for Animals is Big Business

Veterinary medicine is now big business and practically on an equal financial footing with human health care.

It didn’t used to be that way, of course. Years ago, most vets made house visits and they would treat almost any kind of animal. Almost anyone who could afford to keep a pet could afford to keep them healthy. Today vet salaries have risen and new vets are demanding high starting salaries. Some veterinary school grads, for instance, have starting salaries of upwards of $60,000.

Vets explain the high cost of things by citing various overhead costs like x-rays, surgery, kennels, ultrasound and anesthetic equipment. Many vets also have “office visit” fees, ranging from $45 to $65 just to walk in the door. These prices are higher depending on the city neighborhood. A vet in Society Hill will charge an arm and a leg, while a vet in tony Rittenhouse Square will be sure to charge you double that with other costs thrown in for good measure.

Vets are on my mind because last week a friend and I had to put down my cat Zoey. It was a very sad day, but I will spare you the emotion. Anyone who has ever loved a cat knows what the feline mourning process is like. Zoey had some sort of intestinal blockage that a nearby clinic said they might be able to fix—for thousands of dollars, of course. The red flag here was the word might.

I suspected that Zoey had worms and that this was the reason for the blockage. The vet stated he would be able to determine the nature of the blockage with a $400 ultrasound and then Zoey would then be eligible for a thousand dollar-plus surgery. During that first vet visit I did order an X-ray but the X-ray only showed that there was a blockage. I did opt for a worm shot thinking that if the blockage was due to worms then the worms would probably die and pass out of Zoey’s system. The first visit cost me $180.

After the worm shot, Zoey went downhill faster than a kid on a skateboard. I don’t mean to make light of the situation. I was not a happy camper. In fact, I was what they call devastated when I had to bring Zoey back to the clinic because she was having seizures.

At the clinic, I told the intake clerk that this was an emergency situation and that my cat needed to see a vet right away. Ordinarily, people who bring pets to the clinic are obligated to wait for hours, but I knew that Zoey would not survive a 3-hour wait. To bump the line was $300. Could I commit to that and relinquish a credit card or a debit card? Cash would do, of course, although nothing was mentioned about writing a check.

“No deal,” I told the clerk.

“My cat is dying and I’d like a vet to check her and tell me my options before I commit to anything,” I said. Sensing the urgency of my words, the clerk suggested I wait while she checked with the vet. Five minutes later she told me to bring Zoey into the examination room. The vet checked her out and announced, “You can bring her around to the emergency room where we can begin to think about surgery.” The ER, as it turned out, was in the same building but around the corner. Just walking into the ER with the thought of doing surgery meant paying another prohibitive high fee in advance, vis a vie a credit or debit card, and cash of course.

The idea of paying in advance for medical treatment is something that only seems to happen in so-called, “less than desirable neighborhoods.” The clinic assumes, and maybe rightly so, that too many pet owners will bolt after laying out huge sums for shots, cherry flavor pain medication, heartworm preventatives or flea and tick control medication, not to mention state of the art x-rays or ultrasounds.

No doubt that the clinic vets have been burned and they want their money, but is this the right way to go about it?

Paying upfront is something I noticed years ago when I first started going to a dermatologist in what I would call a perfectly ‘okay’ neighborhood. A so called “office visit” charge just to walk in the door was processed before I could see the doctor, the logic being that you never knew when a patient would bolt once they got the treatment they needed, even though patients would pay extra for procedures done (later) in the office. The whole process reminded me of buying Chinese food in neighborhoods where one places their food order through a slot in a large bullet proof pane of fingerprint smeared plastic.

So yes, owning a pet is now almost an elitist thing, thanks to rising vet costs. It’s no wonder that many people opt to forgo the vet after the initial mandatory visit for shots and “fixing.” Probably half the feral cats in the riverwards became that way because of the costs of keeping a cat. A pragmatist would say, “Well, if you can’t afford to take your pet to a vet, don’t get one,” but most people I think have no idea of the cost of a vet until their animal gets sick, and then they are in a state of shock.

But here’s the strangest rub of all:

After I told the vet that I could not afford to bring Zoey to the emergency room, he said, “Well, if it was my cat I would put her to sleep. I can tell by the way she is, that she’s dying. You will spend a lot of money in ER but she will go right back to being

What about that suggestion to take Zoey to the ER? What was that all about?

Do I hear the zing of cash registers, ATM machines? When I brought Zoey to the clinic, I witnessed a customer argue with a clerk about the necessity and cost of a procedure, which of course included use of his credit or debit card.

The way I see it, veterinary “ethics” as it relates to medicine is still evolving. The old way was simple: animals were on a lower scale than humans, so the demarcation lines were easier. Today there is an added emphasis on animals as being part of the “human” family. The result of this is that some lines are blurring: what is the value of a pet’s life? Is it as valuable as the life of a sick aunt or uncle? Vets can take advantage of this ambiguity. Some even take advantage of human guilt in order to procure unnecessary medical procedures.

I do believe that veterinary medicine is an honorable profession. Without vets, we animal lovers would be in trouble. But just because I love my pet doesn’t mean I’m going to close my eyes and say Yes to extortion.