What we can learn from Stripes
Tuesday, July 14 2009
This striking graph compares the rise in veterinary costs to the rise in human health costs over the last twenty odd years. It was created by Andrew Gibbs of the American Enterprise Institute, and he argues it shows there’s nothing wrong with the increase in human health spending; rather, the problem is the level of spending.
Note the double-axis graph. Vet spending, on the left, is consistently 1/200th of the spending of people spending. According to Gibbs:
The main reason for this is obvious: we value our own lives and those of our families more than we do our pets or other animals. At the same time, however, veterinary care is one of the few areas of health where we are directly confronted with difficult decisions regarding the costs and benefits of additional treatments.
Gibbs is generally right, but he then argues that this shows the importance of “consumer choice” in keeping cost low.
The problem is, he’s glossing over a huge difference in the two markets – namely, we kill millions of pets every year, simply because nobody wants them. About 8 million pets enter shelters every year: 4 million get adopted and 4 million get put to death.
And when a pet’s illness gets too expensive, we kill it. That’s how we keep veterinary costs low – wholesale slaughter supplemented by selective termination. Which is why I don’t put much stock in the favorite anti-reform canard that dogs in Canada can get a hip replacement in under a week. Not all dogs can get new hips, and certainly not dogs put down in the shelter.
I’m not just hand-waving here. This is a real problem for me. My cat, Stripes, is sick, which makes me more or less her health insurer. I’ve already spent too much money on her care, but we still don’t know what’s wrong with her. Whatever it is, it’s not fatal. Just expensive. And there may come a time – perhaps soon – when all I can afford to do is put her down. That’s how I plan to keep her costs acceptably low.
But we can’t euthanize sick people in this country. In most places, we don’t even let them kill themselves. So whatever similarities between sick people and sick pets, beneath it all is this massive, crucial difference: We don’t kill sick people who get too expensive. And that’s a good thing, because otherwise my ticket would have been punched a long time ago.
