Look at what is required for surgery.

Dogs and cats: 

The patient is admitted into a cage or run - sharing a room with a number of other patients. The patient is moved to the surgical prep area and assuming pre-op testing and the pre-anesthesia exam have been done and are satisfactory to the doctor, two nurses will give the pre-anesthetic drugs, place an IV catheter, then induce anesthesia as directed. The veterinarian will scrub for surgery (usually in a room that also serves another purpose, such as radiology) while the two nurses shave/scrub the surgical site, move the patient into surgery, and give the final scrub. One nurse stays in surgery as an anesthetist, along with the doctor (not even one in some cases of some practices). At the end of the procedure, that nurse (with the aid of another if it is a large dog) moves the patient to recovery… usually the same room as the prep area. Once the patient is extubated, a nurse moves the patient back to the initial cage or run.

Total space needed: 1 surgery room, one shared ward, one multipurpose prep area, one multipurpose area with a scrub sink.

Total staff needed: One veterinarian (average DVM pay nationally is $91,000), one nurse (with brief help from a second) (average licensed veterinary technician pay is $31,000).

The doctor writes up the procedure, and a nurse or receptionist invoices the client from a very simplified fee schedule and takes payment that day.

Humans:

The patient is admitted into at least a bed in a pre-op ward, if not an entire room. This is considerably larger than a cage. A nurse places an IV catheter. The anesthesiologist (or nurse anesthetist) administers the sedative, then a team of nurses moves the patient to surgery. The anesthetist begins anesthesia while several nurses set up the surgery, while the surgeon scrubs. During surgery, there is a team of people in the OR, minimum 1 nurse, the surgeon, and the anesthetist. After surgery, the patient is moved to a bed in a recovery room.

Total space needed: 1 curtain area in pre-op, one in recovery. One OR, one scrub area.

Total staff needed: 1 surgeon (Average surgeon salary $300,000+), 1 anesthetist (nurse anesthetist $160,000; anesthesiologist $269,000), multiple nurses (average RN pay $68,000).

The doctor, the nurse, and the anesthetist write up records. These records go to a billing specialist to ascertain the maximum possible amount that can be charged to the insurance company. There may be some back-and-forth between billing and insurance before most is paid. Now Accounts Receivable sends a bill for the patient’s responsibility and starts the process to collect his amount long after the fact. Often, the surgeon, the anesthesiologist, the OR, and maybe even the hospital itself are all separate billing entities. They may even all be separate businesses, with some in your insurance network, and some not. Now more people are involved, explaining to you why you owe, how much you owe, and to whom.

Summary:

Human medicine has much higher salaries, requires more people per procedure, and has specialists in extracting the maximum amount from insurance companies. They also require entire billing offices to collect from the patients. Human medicine requires much larger facilities, has far more regulatory compliance (heard of HIPAA? You can’t even have other people within a certain distance as a patient is admitted to the hospital). Human medicine has mostly insured patients, spreading the costs. This means that insurance companies are fairly insensitive to price, as they can raise rates by justifying the increase to state insurance overseers.

The education costs and student loan debt burdens are similar for both animal medicine and human. Human medicine has much higher costs for malpractice insurance.