It’s our job to recommend the best medical care for your pet, both preventive and therapeutic. Yes, it is hard for poor people, but veterinary medicine is an industry with enormous costs that have to be paid.
Veterinary medical care has advanced a lot. We use a $1500 warming unit for the patient during anesthesia. The anesthesia equipment costs tens of thousands to purchase, plus operating costs. Our in-house lab equipment is over $100,000. X-ray, another $60–150,000. Dental equipment (including x-ray) another $30,000. Add computers, networking infrastructure, exam room equipment, cages and runs, surgery table and instruments (good hand instruments can cost upwards of $50–200 each, and a surgical pack often has 20–30 instruments in it).
With the exception of salaries and insurance rates, our costs are every bit as high as in human medicine, but our patient volume is lower, and our fees average 1/10 those for an equivalent procedure for a person.
We HAVE to recommend the best care we can provide, and in many cases recommend referral to a specialist. However, if you really can’t afford that (and it isn’t for US to judge), TELL US. Even though we are frustrated that we can’t deliver optimal care, we can scale recommendations back, and further back, until we find something closer to your budget. No, “poor people” won’t get the same top quality care, but most of the older, cheaper treatments are still available and may be sufficient. It’s just malpractice for us to start there without recommending more diagnostics first, and newer, more effective treatments.
Get pet insurance, friends. Even for those who aren’t poor, veterinary care can get expensive. A trip to an emergency clinic is very unlikely to be under $1000, and many specialty procedures can run $5000 and more. I have heard many reports of $20k-75k spent at specialists. So what if the insurance runs $50/month/pet and you never use it? That means your furry family member didn’t need it, and that’s a good thing.