Hire a Vet?

 

Hire a Vet?

As the “keeper and maintainer” of Isabella (a Bengal kitty) and Lily (a sweet doggie mix) – not pictured above – who are our furry companions and spirit lifters, I have been watching as private equity firms in the Los Angeles area, rolling up veterinary hospitals and clinics… with treatment/surgical prices rising very fast. We pay several hundred dollars a month for pet insurance with lots of exclusions and co-pays. The incredible shortage of veterinarians, the high cost of veterinary school (which mirrors American medical school tuition) and the willingness of Americans to Make Pets First, can explain the massive entry of private equity into an industry where consumers are truly ready to pay.

“As pet ownership increases, so has the willingness of owners to spend on pet care. That has made investments in veterinarian medicine very popular among corporations and private-equity firms, according to a report by The Atlantic. Corporate-owned clinics see pet care as a viable revenue source, causing prices for visits to increase. Mars Inc., the makers of Skittles and Snickers candies, is the largest owner of stand-alone veterinary clinics in the country, operating more than 2,000 facilities under the names Banfield, VCA, and BluePearl, according to the Atlantic report.” Anthony Solorzano, Los Angeles Times, May 22nd. The analytics for veterinarians explain reality in a nasty and cruel way…. With lots of love inside.

But the trigger for this blog was this excerpt from the Solorzano piece: “A 2019 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that veterinarians are as much as four times more likely to die by suicide than the general population. In an interview with National Public Radio, psychologist Kerry Carafa attributed the high rate of suicide in the pet-care field to the balance of care they must shoulder. A veterinarian needs to care not only for the pets, but for the owners and for themselves.” We don’t talk much about it, but having a pet is an important part of life for so many. Having healthy vets is a necessity too.

Virtually every pet keeper (I hate the notion “owner”) I know will go miles and miles, extra yards and yards, to keep their pet healthy and well fed, even if the human has to cut back. Look at the plethora of pet food advertised in every medium imaginable. Organic. Expensive ingredients. Visuals that make even humans drool. We tend to ignore the highly educated cadre of veterinarians that are there for our little loving critters… and us. With pet adoptions soaring during the pandemic, with government austerity a roiling tsunami that threatens to drown a vast cadre of Americans, whose mental health often depends on having a great companion pet, having a pet and keeping him or her health ain’t cheap no more.

And after a natural disaster, reality is dispersed and lost pets, the destruction of their homes too and layoffs at local government, spelling disaster for humans and their companions alike. California, which is better off than most of the rest of the country, is not having a particularly good time either. Solorzano continues: “A recent survey by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals found that more than 344,000 shelter animals in California do not have adequate access to veterinary care staff. Across the state, about 60% of shelters say they have unfilled veterinarian positions and approximately 54% have unfilled registered veterinarian technicians positions, according to the SPCA.

“The lack of animal medical care has led to overcrowded shelters, a rise in pet illnesses and an increasing rate of adoptable animals being euthanized, according to the survey. The shortage of veterinarians also leads to a lack of medical care available for pet owners, which leads to more animals being surrendered to shelters, according to the survey.

“‘The pandemic really elevated a crisis that was probably brewing in the background for the last 20 to 40 years, but really accelerated it when many new people adopted pets,’ [John Tegzes, dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at Western University] said. ‘The demand for veterinary services started to increase exponentially quickly in Southern California.’… Western University College of Veterinary Medicine is one of only two veterinary schools in California. The U.S. has 33 schools for veterinarian medicine, each with a cap on students being admitted. For Western University, the number of students accepted into its four-year program is limited to 120, Tegzes said. Its 2025 graduating class will see 104 students entering the profession.

“Tuition for veterinary students at Western University costs roughly $67,000 per year, which means most graduating students are leaving school with large student debt….” We are becoming a nation that does not care about other people or the little furry critters that look to us to take care of them… with a bureaucracy that finds it cheaper to kill these helpless friends than try and take care of them. And that does not reflect particularly well for any nation. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and I can tell a lot about the character of a person by their relationship to their pet(s)… noting that Donald Trump doesn’t have any.