Pets

Attitudes like this are why there is currently a mental health crisis in veterinary medicine. Do you have knowledge of the cost of schooling, supplies, and overhead in a veterinary clinic? I do. These are people doing a silly surgery in the back room of a nightclub with fisher price surgical instruments. The typical "markup" in a veterinary hospital is criminal.....criminally low. Because people won't pay it. So, support staff remain underpaid. Veterinarians are doctors. Vet techs, mostly credentials and licensed, are like nurses (and so much more). A pet undergoing an emergency spay is having major abdominal surgery. They are hooked up to the same monitors used in human hospitals. They are under the same anesthesia agents you'd find in human hospitals. The medicine is the same. The IV fluids are the same. The laboratory procedures and radiography are the same. And it's all it one hell of a fraction of the price as human medicine. Where in human medicine are we having an ovariohysterectomy for $3200 without insurance? If this is an emergency spay then there is a complicating factor at play and, yes, that will raise pricee because the amount of time/medicine/anesthesia/lab work/etc is increasee.

I understand how daunting it is. I currently can't afford my kids' Christmas or my own emergency dental care let alone some of the extra vet care my two cats need. I understand why it is distressing. No one wants thousands of dollars of bills. But to say that veterinarians are criminal for doing their job is just not right. If you were to break down the supplies in this surgery side by side with that of what a human hospital would charge it would be infuriating (because the human markup is extreme).

I'm not pulling this out of my butt, either. I have decades of experience in veterinary medicine, especially emergency medicine, and have a lotnof experience with inventory and pricing. We're not in this to fleece people or take advantage of people. And before we get anecdotal - I know there are shitty vets out there. We all have experience with them. Like many industries they are the exception to the norm.