The High Cost of Being a Pet-o-Phile

 

According to the January 25th Forbes Advisor: “Pet ownership in the U.S. has jumped significantly over the past three decades. As of 2024, 66% of U.S. households (86.9 million homes) own a pet. That’s up from 56% in 1988, pet ownership statistics show. From companionship to emotional support, pets are a vital part of their owners’ lives. In fact, 97% of pet owners consider their pets to be a part of their family.

• Dogs are the most popular pet in the U.S. (65.1 million U.S. households own a dog), followed by cats (46.5 million households) and freshwater fish (11.1 million households).
• Millennials make up the largest percentage of current pet owners (33%), followed by Gen X (25%) and baby boomers (24%).
• In 2022, Americans spent $136.8 billion on their pets, up nearly 11% from 2021 ($123.6 billion)
• Essential dog expenses cost an average of $1,533 annually.
• 42% of dog owners and 43% of cat owners got their pets from a store, while 38% of dog owners and 40% of cat owners got their pets from an animal shelter or rescue.”

I am clearly part of this great American source of joy. My wife and I have two female pets (above): a young Bengal cat named Princess Isabella and an elderly “chihuahua plus who knows what” named Lilly – also having lost two pets last year (both over 16 years of age). Even with insurance, given exclusions and deductibles, those lost family members’ passing cost us thousands of dollars, and insurance for our current little support systems runs well over $200 a month in limited pet-care insurance policies. Deductibles and exclusions increase our costs significantly. But as the above article notes, these wondrous little critters are family, through and through. Caring for them is a major priority. As reflected by the proliferation of advertising on social media and old-world ad-supported television of all sorts, pet care is a huge industry.

Katie Thomas, writing for the June 23rd The Morning news feed for the New York Times, explains the above trends and why costs have proportionately risen even more than human healthcare: “Pets these days are just like us. They get birthday cakes, day care and rubber boots to wear in the snow. Their health care is becoming more human, too — for better and for worse.

“Decades ago, animal care was relatively rudimentary. Veterinarians usually owned their own clinics, and the options to treat a sick or injured pet were limited. Today, animal hospitals are equipped with expensive magnetic resonance imaging machines, round-the-clock critical care units and teams of specialists in cancer, cardiology and neurology. For pets and the people who love them, the advances are welcome.

“But as animals’ health care has changed to more closely resemble our own, it has also taken on some of the problems of the human system, including the biggest one: cost. The price of veterinary care has soared more than 60 percent over the past decade, outpacing inflation. Private equity firms have snapped up hundreds of independent clinics, in a trend reminiscent of corporate roll-ups of doctors’ offices. Veterinarians around the country told me that they worry this is changing the way that they practice, as they face growing pressure to push costly treatments and order more tests.

“The changed landscape means that even as veterinarians can do more for dogs and cats than ever before, pet owners face sometimes heartbreaking decisions about whether they can afford the care. (Read more in our story on the topic.)… About one-quarter of primary care clinics and three-quarters of specialty clinics are owned by corporations, according to Brakke Consulting, which focuses on the animal health industry. Sometimes, the corporate ownership is not obvious: Many private equity firms do not change the name of the vet clinic when they take it over.

“Most veterinarians are paid, at least in part, based on how much money they bring into a practice, whether that is by ordering tests, selling prescription dog food or performing procedures. One veterinarian said she quit her job after she was told her ‘cost per client’ was too low; another said she was told she needed to see 21 animals a day, about a half-dozen more than her current workload….

“Other veterinarians said the pressure had no influence on the care they provided. In interviews, they said they bore the brunt of pet owners’ complaints, even when they have little to do with setting prices. Veterinarians make far less money than doctors for humans, and are also often in debt from years of education. Prices have gone up partly because of the rising cost of drugs, vaccines and other supplies, as well as worker salaries in a tight labor market.

“One veterinarian I interviewed, Dr. Pam Nichols of South Jordan, Utah, has seen the transformation firsthand. When she was starting out in the 1990s, she said she used to sneak dachshunds into the human hospital where her father was a radiologist to give them M.R.I. scans. If the dog needed surgery, the bill would be about $2,000. Now, she said, a similar dog might get an M.R.I. and a CT scan, and will probably be operated on by a specialist who is assisted by several nurses. The cost could reach $10,000… Veterinary care differs from human health care in one big way: Most pet owners pay out of their own pocket — and in full — before leaving the vet’s office. While pet insurance is available, only a small percentage of pet owners have it.

“A generation ago, pet owners with a seriously ill animal may have had little choice but to opt for euthanasia if they wanted to relieve their pet’s suffering. Now, they must choose between extending the animal’s life and going into what can be debilitating debt, or letting an animal die. I spoke to some pet owners who were still paying off credit card debt years after their animals had died. And animal welfare groups said owners frequently relinquished their pets to shelters because they couldn’t afford veterinary bills.” Medical care for many pets routinely can climb into the thousands and thousands of dollars even without those expensive scans.

For many people, they are willing to pay for a pet before they consider their own medical needs. Pets are completely dependent on their human caretakers, do not understand things like cost and medical choices and look at us when they are sick or injured… with those eyes! And since pets have shorter life spans than their human caretakers, medical costs related to aging are something almost all pet caretakers will face. But they are family!!!

I’m Peter Dekom, and so much of the quality of our lives is driven by our little companions, most of us will do just about anything to see that they are properly cared for… even as corporate profitability is the new pet care driver!