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Originally Posted by marketsmart
so, long story short, one of my dogs gets bit by another dog.. she needs to go to the vet after hours to get stitches..
cost for after hours emergency visit, local anesthesia, antibiotics = $140.00
if a human would have went to the ER for a few stitches, total cost = $1500.00
so, what is the difference? my vet (3 vets total) has a lovely office and a staff of about 10, so overhead is not that much lower..
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this is true Vets often have a decent staff. What they usually don't have, however, is the large amount of patients. A busy ER could see several hundred or more patients a day. A vet will maybe see a handful of patients a day so they have a lot smaller overhead when it comes to billing and such. Add in the nurses that it takes to care for all the overnight patients in a hospital and they far outnumber those in a vet.
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my vet went to school the same amount of time as a human dr. so not lower debt for training..
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Well, Kind of. Both doctors and vets go to regular college the 4 years of med school. But regular doctors also have to have at least 1 more year of supervised training. Most states then require you to do anywhere between 1-7 more years of residency before you can start to practice medicine on your own. So a vet can go to school for 8 years while the average doctor it is about 12.
Add in nurses that typically go to school for 4-6 years Vs vet techs that only take a few months up to 2 years of schooling.
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my vet uses the same med types as humans for the most part, so not that..
my vet uses the a lot of the same vendors for suture, etc as hospitals, so shouldnt be that (although, go to the ER and see what they charge you for supplies)..
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The difference is that your vet doesn't have thousands of patients a year that come in and get service from them then not pay. Most vets require payment up front or at least a deposit. If you go into the ER they will treat you even if you can't pay. So the supplies cost the same, but pretty much all of the vets patients pay where an ER maybe not.
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so, is it malpractice insurance that makes the costs so high? i dont think so...
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Malpractice insurance for doctors is through the roof. If you take your dog to a vet and something happens and the dog dies, chances are you will not be filing a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the vet. I did a quick search and found
this article that says the largest vet malpractice award so far has been around 39K. The article is a few years old though so it could be the different. I also did a search and found the average doctor malpractice settlement is around 125K with the average jury award being around 239K. So regular doctors pay out a hell of a lot more and I would assume more often so you could guess their insurance will be a lot more expensive then vet insurance.
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so what is it? why is there such a discrepancy between human care and animal care costs when there are so many of the same factors involved?
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I think when it comes to animal care cost is often a big decider. If your kid or spouse was sick you would spend every penny you had, sell everything you own and borrow whatever it took to get them the treatment they needed. If it is your dog and it is going to cost 3K for a surgery to save them, you might not do it and just have the animal put down. So I think vets strive to keep costs affordable or they will just lose customers.
For me some of it is partially that hospitals and doctors can charge whatever they want and you don't really have much of a choice, but I also think a lot of it is simply millions of people every year getting treatment and not paying for it so that cost is passed on to those that can and do pay.