Here’s an interesting healthcare tidbit. AEI’s Andrew Biggs presents us with this chart showing increased costs of human healthcare compared to increased costs of veterinary healthcare:
The point here is supposed to be that even in an area of healthcare where there’s no insurance and we have to pay everything out of pocket, costs are still skyrocketing. So maybe having “skin in the game” doesn’t really have much effect after all.
Which is interesting — except for one thing: it might not be true. As John Schwenkler points out, a big part of the increase is accounted for by a large increases in the number of pets. We aren’t necessarily spending a lot more per pet, we just have more pets. In fact, he points to some market research that suggests cats have actually gotten cheaper over the years: we spent $85 per cat in 2001 but only $81 in 2007. (Dogs, conversely have gotten a little more expensive, but only by 11%, not the 30-40% the chart suggests.)
So which data is correct? Beats me. But considering the high-pressure sales job vets have adopted in recent years, I have a hard time believing that cat expenditures have gone down. After all, we didn’t use to get their teeth cleaned or spend a couple hundred bucks a year on fancy flea/heartworm/hookworm/etc. goop. Now we do. Caveat emptor.
