Ever wonder why Vet visits are causing folks to take out a second mortgage to pay for an office visit?
Many people consider their pets family, so when a pet gets sick, they will often will go to great lengths to treat their furry friends, sometimes racking up tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills.
For 25 years the Shields family has operated a family-funded cat care and rescue organization. At any given time we’ll have somewhere between 30-to-60 felines to care for. We’re constantly trapping and spay-neutering, and treating sick cats. We do as much of the “vet care” as we are qualified to do. But still there times when cats require a veterinary visit, and the costs keep rising.
The cost of vet care has gone up an astounding 60% over the last decade. Here’s a quick summary identifying several factors driving up vet bills.
One of the biggest reasons that costs are rising is the ongoing corporatization of small vet practices,
The vets were saying, “We feel terrible about this, but running a vet practice is expensive. We have exorbitant student loans to pay off. We need to make a living also.’ And their own practices are being bought up by big companies.”
Private equity firms, owned by billionaires and millionaires, are working to buy-up every small business in particular fields and then jack up prices. They’re creating monopolies and manipulating the market for those services. This is happening with laundromats, plumbers, heating/air companies, veterinary clinics, funeral services, ambulance companies, private schools, apartment complexes, nursing homes/elder care, newspapers… This list goes on… They plan to squeeze every penny out of people. They don’t factor the human cost of all this.
The government should use anti-trust laws and rules against price fixing to stop it.
More than half of owners – including those in high earning households – have skipped necessary veterinary care in the previous year or declined recommended treatment at some point in the past, mostly because of the associated costs, a national study has found.
Seven in 10 people who skipped or declined care cited cost as the main reason, saying they couldn’t afford it or didn’t think it worth the expenditure, according to the study conducted by PetSmart Charities and Gallup.
The results were surprisingly similar across all income levels, PetSmart Charities president Aimee Gilbreath said, demonstrating the need for vets to better accommodate their clients’ financial concerns.
“There’s a narrative that says this only affects folks in the bottom part of the income spectrum,” Gilbreath said. “But it’s all across the spectrum. That surprised me – and it worries me. If folks in the top half are struggling to afford primary vet care, who can afford vet care now?”
According to “The State of Pet Care” report, vet care costs in the U.S. have soared more than 60% since 2014, forcing many owners to forgo recommended treatment for their pets, sometimes with life-threatening consequences.
At least 60% of households have a pet, and people love them as family members,” Gilbreath said. “We don’t think they should be a luxury item. They’re good for people’s mental, physical and emotional health, and if it becomes unaffordable that’s a really sad situation.”
The survey of 2,498 U.S adults owning at least one dog or cat, conducted between November 2024 and January 2025, found that 52% of pet owners had skipped or declined care.
Diagnostic procedures (22%), vaccinations (18%) and elective surgeries (16%) were the most commonly declined pet health care services, but 11% said they had turned down recommended medications and 7% said they had refused lifesaving surgeries.
Of those who skipped or declined care, 71% of respondents said cost was the key factor. While that response was highest (80%) among those with a household income of between $36,000 and $60,000, nearly two-thirds (66%) of those earning $90,000 or more said the same.
Quite a story isn’t it? I wonder where and when it’s going to end.
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