A typical hip surgery for a dog is going to be a lot simpler than a typical human hip replacement. For example, I believe canine hip dysplasia can be treated by simply cutting off the head of the femur. The remaining muscles, ligaments, and other legs can handle the weight of all but the largest dogs.
Of course there are countless other factors inflating human medical costs, but simple comparisons like this are hardly apples-to-apples.
I think about this A LOT. Why is that spaying a cat can be done for under $200 but a hysterectomy on a human is like a million bajillion dollars?
I think part of it if malpractice insurance costs, but part of is that we have different standards for veterinary care. I mean for a hip replacement most people would not be okay with their anesthesologist, surgeon, and radiologist being the same person. And no human doctor is trained to do all those things. So you end up with multiple specialist bills when the vet equivalent only requires one person.
Also, I think for any given technique or medical condition, vets have fewer options than humans, requiring less expertise in any one area. Just as one example, how many antibiotics do vet routinely prescribe? I’ve only seen amoxicillin/clavulanate and metronidazole (although I’m sure there’s more). You’re average IM doctor is probably fluent with about 20, and of course any infectious disease doctor will know 3x as many. So there’s going to be greater costs because with people we have a super-expensive new antibiotic to treat grandma’s infection resistant to multiple other bacteria, whereas the dog would have just been put down for lack of other options. Or we have 15 different types of prosthetic joints for a total hip, the newest of which are crazy expensive, as opposed to however many dogs have.
Of course, veterinary knowledge may be relatively shallow, but it’s incredibly broad. I mean they act as generalists, surgeons, radiologists for multiple species! No physician could ever dream of having such a wide-ranging practice.
Then again, the vet charges me $600 for a senior exam for my cat, while Medicare pays me about $150 for a complete exam on a human, of which the patient only pays 20%. Why are the vets paid so much more to examine a cat? The patients I see often have more medical problems than my cats do?
$600 for a senior exam, $500 for a teeth cleaning upthread? Those prices are ridiculous. Maybe it’s regional, but here you’ll pay around $45 ( plus an extra hundred if you want blood work) for an exam and $100-$150 for a teeth cleaning.
Does that $150 Medicare exam include anything else? I’d bet the cat’s $600 “senior exam” includes blood work, urinalysis, etc. all done in the vet clinic.
I’m used to $100 or so for an adult/senior wellness checkup, with some basic bloodwork and often $20 or so in some medications. Hundreds of dollars for whole slates of overpriced inhouse tests are exactly what I hate about CorpVetCo.
$600 is outrageous. My vet’s senior exam for cats is about $60 for the exam itself and $150 for the blood work including an SDMA test. A urinalysis would be another $40 or so. They’re sent out to Phoenix Labs, too, not done in-house.
A basic dental at my vet is $350.
My vet wanted almost $300 for an annual exam +vaccines for a healthy 4 year old cat - by rejecting some vaccines ( since he doesn’t go outside) I was able to get the quote down to $200.
I did the vaccines at a vetco clinic for $75 and I’m checking other vets prices for exams.
Thats . . . insanely expensive. That much for the exam only?
A basic office visit for a cat at our vet is $42.95, irrespective of age. Vaccines are $20-$25 each. They don’t advertise a “senior exam.”
$600 sounds like you’re getting seriously ripped off.
Oh for sure, I wasn’t trying to defend this price, merely pointing out that it wasn’t an apples-to-apples comparison to a Medicare-reimbursed basic checkup. Depending on the lab work, $150+ for an exam for a very old cat could be reasonable.