The 10 states with the highest veterinarian costs!

[politicat]

7. Compare the costs with commercial rental rates, and that's likely to track.

I'm in Colorado, we spent several thousand on our two cats in their end of life. Our kitties were both on the hospice model, but keeping them comfortable while they were still engaged with the world wasn't free.

Our primary vet owns her building and equipment outright, and it's all incredibly practical, but not updated at all. Her rates are highly reasonable, her care is excellent, and she's in demand, but if her building gets re-zoned or a natural disaster renders her building unusable, or if for some other reason she has to move, her rates will double, just because of the cost of infrastructure. Her backup vet is a mobile vet, who comes to the house rather than having an office. This is great for the animals, because they don't get stressed by a car ride, and good for the vet, since her infrastructure costs are lower, but she doesn't have much diagnostic equipment. Our specialist vet is associated with the vet teaching hospital at CSU, 70 miles away. Their rates can be reasonable, given what they're doing, but they're also subsidized by the whole state university system's infrastructure.

For what vets are doing, without much in the way of insurance at all, they're surprisingly reasonable. Vet care is very similar to what a world without any health insurance would look like -- people who can pay will; people who can't, won't, and there will be massive suffering.

All of the vets we worked with are massive supporters of single payer/single provider (human) health care. They want medical care providers nationalized, because they see how awful the system is when it relies on credit, wealth and access.