The Veterinary Industrial Complex

dturm wrote:

BCSnob wrote:
Our friend goes to homes and dog events to provide vet care in addition to working in a small clinic in a small town. She talks about some people (even those she knows personally) wanting/expecting free care both at dog events and in the clinic. These folks never think about the massive loans she needs to pay off which she took out in order to learn how to provide the free care they are wanting to receive.

I'm not saying there are not vets/vet clinics that are more about the money than the care. I'm saying that clients attitudes may have help create the attitude some vets/vet clinics take with their clients.

I know it's hard to cover the costs of animal care in many cases. The flip side is that if remuneration for the vet is not consistent with the years of education many of the most qualified will opt for other professions. This leaves the people selected for vet school picked from a much smaller pool, thus lessening the talent pool.

My comments were not so much disputing that vet medicine has changed, become more technical, equipment intensive. It undisputedly has.

I have issue with the assertion that the quality of animal care has diminished. If it has, it's not the knowledge base available or the testing or equipment that is utilized, or the cost. It's the way medicine is practiced. That is by no means universal in the profession.

I find the blanket assertion that vets routinely order needless tests or procedures in the name of money, offensive. In fact, rarely are new pieces of equipment purchased unless there is an underlying need to improve patient care AND it already makes sense financially. It doesn't make sense from a business standpoint to purchase an expensive piece of equipment in the hopes of pushing the use of it unnecessarily in hopes of making money. Doing that is just stupid.

Doug

Doug, I think with all due respect to you and your profession no one, including myself in this discussion has claimed any blanket assertion that all vets are operating the same.

What I am claiming is that when a vet practice becomes large there are undeniable financial pressures that must be acknowledged. Vets and Doctors don't like to think of themselves as businessmen, but the fact is...they are if they are in their own practice.

Further that this trend is not in the overall best interests of the animals or their owners. As costs rise, some vets are MORE expensive than a human GP charges for a visit, many people just cannot afford the cost of Vet care. For some people a visit to the vet may mean they don't get treated for something they might badly need treatment for. Or have to forego that treatment.

Vet costs, with it's technological intensiveness is inherently more expensive.

Lastly There is a book that I believe every medical professional should be required to read it is; THE LAWS OF MEDICINE by Siddartha Mukerjee. Dr. Mukerjee was educated at The University of Oxford and is the author of THE EMPEROR OF ALL MALADIES A Biography of Cancer which was the basis of the eponymous PBS series by Ken Burns. This book is about doctor patient interaction and how doctors at all levels know less and less about the people (and pets) that they are treating. It's a very good book and I highly recommend it. And if you get a chance also listen to Dr. Mukerjees TED Talks.

I am now 63 years old, I have had dogs the overwhelming majority of my life, I have been to countless vets all over America and in several other countries. One thing I have noticed is that nowhere is veterinary medicine practiced more like human medicine or more expensive than in the United States. And when I ask myself are we ACTUALLY getting BETTER care than those vets I have been to in places like Cambodia, Switzerland, England and several other countries where it is not the Big Business it is here, or as technologically intensive, my answer has to be a resounding no.