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Putting a price on your pet's health
Yoda, a chihuahua owned by health club owner Les Price
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Tess Vigeland: Guess how much we spend on our pets. $100 million? $500 million? No. $50 billion last year, according to the American Pet Products Association. That's a record -- and more than we spend on video games and recorded music combined.
Why are we covering this? Because pets reside in almost 73 million homes in this country. So let's address one of the big questions we pet owners face, which is why does it cost 50 bucks to just walk in the door at the vet? And why do we blindly pay whatever it takes? We asked our health care reporter Gregory Warner to look into it.
Gregory Warner: Les Price is a manger of a health club and in his spare time, works as a super hero model at comic book conventions. In other words, he's buff. His dog is dainty. A five-pound chihuahua named Yoda.
Les Price: Guys are like, "Hey is that really your dog or are you just watching him for the day?" So I try to make him as tough as possible but he's still pretty much a little diva.
A tough little diva. Yoda got his tail crushed by a car last summer. Les rushed him bloodied in his arms to the vet hospital where the doctor said he needed his tail amputated for $1,700. Without that surgery, he could get a fatal infection.
Price: And I was already thinking like "Wow, $1,700's a lot," and then...
And then the doctor says well we could keep him in for a night or two under observation to see if he needs the surgery.
Price: And I was like okay well how much for the night and the doctor was like, without insurance, it'll be roughly $1,000. And I was just like "Is Madonna staying in this bed?"
The average dog owner spends $655 a year on health care, that's up 50 percent from a decade ago. Cat owners are in for $644, up nearly 75 percent, close to how much our health care costs have risen by.
And that's a puzzle to economists, like Robin Hanson at George Mason University.
Robin Hanson: Everyone's got a favorite villain or bugaboo about why human health care costs are increasing; it's too much regulation, too much government involvement, too much third-party payment.
Too many malpractice lawsuits. None of these factors apply to pets. You can't blame insurers for pushing up costs either. Pet insurance is rare; only 1 percent of pet owners in this country have it. The 99 percent are paying full freight.
Hanson: But in pet medicine, people put their money on the barrel head. And yet pet expenses are increasing nearly as fast as human expenses.
What gives? Hanson and other economists give two explanations. Explanation one: Love. We treat our pets like family. They eat our food, they sleep in our beds, they relax at the spa, they have Facebook accounts. Of course we're going to pay for their health care. Take dogs.
Hanson: So we want to show loyalty to these dogs who are showing loyalty to us. One way to do that is to spend more on medicine for them.
Explanation two for the rising cost has nothing to do with your pets; it's how we see ourselves.
Hanson: We compare ourselves to people around us. And we ask the doctor and they say well, lots of people do this, most people do this, and the bar has been raised on how much you need to spend on your pets to show you're a caring pet owner.
Now it's not just about us and our pets. It's about our friends and their pets. It's about keeping up with the Jones and the Fidos. And here's where it really gets human: We want our pets to have everything modern medicine has to offer.
James Serpell: So the veterinary profession is if anything having a hard time keeping up with this trend.
James Serpell is professor of animal welfare at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.
Serpell: People are saying things like, "I want you to do dialysis on my cat."
For $23,000.
strong class="name">Serpell: "I want you to do a total hip replacement on my dog.
For $3,000.
Serpell: That kind of thing.
But Serpell says veterinarians are also to blame for offering these things.
Serpell: I mean we're not going to build an MRI unit and then not use it. We're going to be recommending that our clients have their animals MRI'd.
At $1,400 a pop. As technology advances, the more doctors can do, the more we'll pay for, because we care or want to show we do. And all these factors amplify each other, driving the cost of health care ever upward.
But there is another way to look at it.
Serpell: Having these animals may be beneficial for the health of the owner.
Decades of research has shown that pet owners are healthier, happier and live longer. Take this study from SUNY Buffalo, where they actually prescribed pets for people with high-blood pressure.
Serpell: They were a group of stockbrokers. They were allowed to choose whether they got a dog or a cat, but they had to get one.
A control group was only given medications. And then after a while they gave both groups stress tests.
Serpell: ...Like having to do mental arithmetic under pressure or that sort of thing. The groups that had the pet were much less reactive to these petty stresses in life, than the other group.
And their blood pressure was lower. In fact, after the study many of the stockbrokers in the control group went out and bought themselves a pet. So when you think about the cost of pet health care, consider the health care that your pet gives you.
...Which brings us back to the Chihuahua and the muscle man. Les Price never did shell out for that tail amputation; he couldn't afford it. And Yoda left the hospital with $30 worth of antibiotics, nothing more. And eventually, got completely better on his own. Though things were pretty dicey for those first couple weeks, the dog was battered and helpless and scared. Les even had to cradle his butt everytime he went to the bathroom. And if that doesn't say "I care," what does?
In Philadelphia, I'm Gregory Warner for Marketplace Money.
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When we have a pet we need to take of his every demands and its health. But when it comes to their health we need to every much conscious about their health. The other question is that how much we spend on them. Actually when we visit a veterinarian we generally pay whatever he says but we don't look what actually the price is. We need to check this properly.
http://www.drronsanimalhospitalsimivalley.com/
As a vet student with considerable experience in veterinary medicine in agriculture, I think I have enough background to give an informed opinion. But I find that the primary basis of my opinions on pet health insurance and care prices is based on my experience as a patient in the human medical industry. It is my observation that insurance companies have generally destroyed the practice of medicine in the human field. Doctors don't practice medicine anymore, they follow a model perscribed by insurance companies to give minimum care with minimum cost. And they are not able to make business work with the insurance company nanny controlling their actions. I do not want to see this become the standard of care for veterinary medicine. I wanted to study veterinary medicine because I enjoyed the practice of medicine; determining the needs of the patient and using scientific knowledge to make positive improvement in the patients' conditions. Should veterinary medicine come to follow the same model as human medicine, no one will be practicing medicine anymore. Insurance companies shoudn't be practicing medicine.
I think too, the cost of health care for pets and people is much like the cost of food. In many ways, we do not spend enough money on either of these industries to truly support the economy of the industry. The real costs of food production are disguised by subsidies, both public and private. For vet medicine, the vets themselves are subsidizing the cost of pet health care (cost of vet medicine also factors into food prices-through animal agriculture and regulatory medicine). Owners expect to pay very little for pet care. Their expectations are pretty unrealistic. Part of the responsibility of animal ownership is being prepared to pay for health care-or better yet, invest in health care before your pets get sick. But that's a topic for another post
Ok, doing the math on your figures 73 million households spending 50 billion on pets - total, including food, toys, medical care, accessories - comes to $684 per household. So for households with two pets (supposed to be the average for families with pets, not sure where I heard that though), it is $342 per pet. I cannot honestly see, after you take the expenses for food, toys and accessories out of that, where most people are spending much on veterinary care. So why are veterinarians blamed for the cost of pet ownership? Seems to me they are not even in the equation. Are these pets even getting preventive care? Vaccines, basic dental care, heart work prevention for the dogs? Those seem basic to me, not an expert on that. Even with one pet, if you spend a dollar a day on pet food, is only about $300 left per year for all the rest.
I see people spending more than 2 dollars a day on fancy coffee. Do we get angry at the coffee shops? Gasoline went up 46 cents in 3 days in my neighborhood. Are we angry at the gas station owner?
Pets are much more of a luxury than gasoline. Maybe less of a luxury than fancy coffee? Maybe not.
Just my thoughts. I cannot figure out why anyone would go to that much effort to become a veterinarian in this day and age. There cannot be a way to earn a living at it with these numbers, and there certainly does not seem to be any respect for what they know.
When I was 12 my mother remarried. Ray was raised in a log house on a farm with 7 brothers & sisters. They never went to the doctor themselves, let alone bringing any of the animals to the vet. They had cows, pigs, chickens, & dogs. The dogs were never spayed or neutered, so when a female got pregnant & had pups, right after they were born one of the boys would put them in a gunny sack & smash them against a tree. That's how they solved that problem. From the way they told it, they didn't seem to think anything of it. This was back in the 40's or 50's, but I understand some people still practice this. Of course, they had a different approach to animals: Ray's mother used to help butcher the animals in the fall, etc… Now, I didn't grow up in that environment, & have a cat which is more like a surrogate child to me than "just" an animal. I can understand where the farmers are coming from, but I don't agree with it. I had 2 old cats not so long ago, each with a different terminal illness: one was 15 with chronic bladder stones, the other was 17 with kidney failure. With each one, I held my old friend in my arms while the vet administered the shot, & I stroked it until it was gone. I had never euthanized an animal before, & it was both the hardest & the kindest thing I have ever done. Anyway, my point is that you can kill in a gentle, respectful way or in a cruel, ugly way.
I am a loyal listener to your show and a vet, and I was distressed by your coverage of vet care last weekend. I wish that Gregory Warner had mentioned some of the costs that factor into the cost of vet care, such as the rising cost of education. A vet has a 4 year bachelor’s degree and a 4 year doctorate. I believe today’s graduates average something like $150,000 in student loan debt when they graduate. I had $107,000 when I graduated in 2003. Consolidated at a low interest rate (these were subsidized federal loans), I still have to pay $1044 per month for 10 years to pay my student debt off. (And, as a side note, vets do not make nearly the same salaries as people with comparable professional degrees: doctors, dentists, and lawyers.) Also, most “veterinary” equipment and many medications are actually made for humans, and we do not get them at a discount because they are going to be used on animals instead of people. So for a dog spay (ovariohysterectomy), you are getting the services of someone with as many years of school as an MD, using surgical, anesthetic, and monitoring equipment that costs as much as it would an MD, but you are paying $300 or $500 instead of the thousands an insurance company would be charged for an ovariohysterectomy on a human.
On a slightly separate issue, I do not agree that everyone only wants what is best for their pet and hates to take money into account. You talked to people, including a vet, from an affluent area. I practice in a less-than-affluent area of Georgia, and money enters into decisions every single day. I don’t know many people in my area who would pay for surgery on a rat. I would love to do it, because a rat feels pain and values his or her life just like the rest of us, but the reality is that I rarely get the chance to. In my area, many people want to do what’s best for their pets, but cannot afford to, and we try to accommodate them as best we can. Many others are somewhat interested in taking decent care of their pets, but not if it means exceeding their pre-formed ideas of what is a reasonable amount to pay. (And some of these people pull up in big shiny SUVs and whip out their iPhones.)
To me, both your stories seemed to start with the assumption that vet care is overpriced and, perhaps, not really necessary. It can indeed be expensive, but few people are forced to get a pet, and I believe that, having gotten one, they have a responsibility to keep it as healthy, pain free, and parasite free as possible. I don’t think that a few hundred dollars a year is a lot for that. I also think it’s wonderful that people who can afford more are often willing to spend money to treat more advanced health problems. There are a lot of things that are expensive to treat, but which can not only extend life but also vastly improve its quality -- like fixing a broken leg instead of leaving it to heal on its own and perhaps cause lifelong pain, or removing bladder stones. There are also things that are expensive to treat that are the result of the owner’s carelessness or prior, err, frugality -- like treating heartworm disease (prevented by a monthly medication), parvovirus (prevented by a vaccine), pyometra (prevented by spaying), and, sometimes, arthritis (exacerbated by obesity).
Did Prof. Hansen, or other economists, do any empirical research as to why pet care costs have gone up? It seems to me that the two reasons she cites apply to humans as well as pets, and of course insurance and litigation apply only to humans. My sister-in-law, in the midst of expensive procesures for her golden retreiver, suggests that pet owners may be getting older, kids have left, and the owners have discetionery income for their pets.
Unfortunately, I do have to factor cost into my decisions over medical care for my dogs. I am fortunate to be in a position to provide fairly well for my dogs, but I know I can't afford every treatment that could be out there for any particular condition. I don't have a well-defined "algorithm" for determining what to do, how much to spend or when to make the "hard decision," though I wish I did.
I recently lost an elderly dog and have another, younger dog, with a chronic condition. What I choose to spend on each dog is different -- it depends on the expected quality of life with the treatment, the likely success of the treatment, the trauma of the treatment itself and the cost of the treatment. I am fortunate to have a vet that lays out the various available treatments, the expected benefits and drawbacks of each treatment (short and long term) and the cost. Then I do my best to arrive at the best decision for both my dog and for me. It's rarely simple and never easy.
I have been a veterinarian for 22 years and have owned a practice during this time. No where in the podcast did you mention the fact that our hospitals do not merely see patients for 50.00 to walk in the door. We have to stock a full pharmacy, radiology suite, surgery suite and pay a professional staff as well as their health insurance!!! How many medical drs have the same financial obligations??? Compound this with school debt, the financial rewards are not great. But that is not why we get into this profession. We are here for the pets and the special bond that is enjoyed between us.
We treat our pets as if they are a member of our family, and cost doesn't even come into our minds. Anyone that thinks about money while caring for there pet should not have a pet. Quality of life should be the only factor it would be like not taking my kid to the doctor because it cost too much. Only a shallow person would even think that there pet doesn't deserve the same vet care as one of there kids receive from a doctor.
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