The dilemma of veterinary care: How much is your pet’s life worth?

(Re-printed From The Tampa Bay Times!!)

Alan Knowles learned about a year ago that Gemini had cancer. The estimated cost of care was beyond his means. ALAN KNOWLES

Alan Knowles was forced to make the decision almost every pet owner faces at least once.

Gemini, Knowles’ lovable pit bull, was on the examination table, suffering from lymphoma. The diagnosis was dire: She had weeks to live.

At 4 years old, she was too young a dog, a cherished family pet, to let go, but Knowles’ finances were limited.

How much was too much?

For some, $200 may be beyond their ability to pay. For others, $1,000, maybe up to $2,000. Some draw the line at $5,000. For others, the sky’s the limit for their loyal and unconditionally loved companions.

For Knowles and others, paying vet bills can be expensive. Industry statistics say Americans pay about double what they paid a decade ago for veterinarian services, now more than $14 billion a year.

With the expensive battery of tests and procedures now available, veterinary fees for a single pet can reach into the tens of thousands of dollars, something inconceivable a few years ago. As at hospitals, many veterinarian offices have the latest in X-ray technology, ultrasound equipment and MRIs.

Just finding out what’s wrong with a sick or injured pet can top $1,000.

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About a year ago, Knowles spotted a lump on Gemini’s chest. He said he had a dog a few years back that died of cancer, and he suspected the same for Gemini.

“I recognized the same smell on her breath,” he said.

His vet opted to wait and see. A couple of weeks passed and Knowles noticed swelling in Gemini’s throat. The swelling didn’t go away, so he took Gemini in for some tests. A biopsy was done, and the bad news was delivered.

Lymphoma is a cancer that originates in the lymph nodes; it can kill a dog fairly quickly.

“I didn’t know what it was,” Knowles said.

His veterinarian recommended against treatment, but Knowles wasn’t sure. He took Gemini to BluePearl Veterinary Partners in Tampa, where specialists offer emergency treatment for injuries and life-threatening diseases.

“I was going over the options of what I could afford,” said Knowles, of Hudson. “It was $500 to get the tests done just to determine what type of lymphoma it was and $200 per treatment. There were four treatments. And that was the least expensive protocol.”

It simply was beyond his ability to pay, he said. As he recounted the story one year later, he took a moment to gather himself. Tears welled up.

“I went in there and was going to ask how I could make her final weeks more comfortable because I couldn’t afford to get her treated anymore,” he said.

Before that decision was made, the veterinarian told Knowles about a program that might help defray the cost of treating Gemini.

“They told us about Frankie’s Friends,” he said, “that they could possibly help.

“I told them I could afford about $50 a week for the treatments, and we were approved. They must have covered about $2,000 of the cost.”

Gemini was treated over the course of two weeks, he said, “and here we are a year later. And she’s doing great.”

Bonni Voiland, executive director of Frankie’s Friends, a national nonprofit group named after a greyhound that died of heart disease in 2007, said her group helps cover costs of emergency and life-threatening veterinary care for people who can’t afford it.

She said the client has to pay some of the costs and the veterinary hospital has to agree to a discount. The procedure must have a good chance of success, and the pet must be assured of a good quality of life for a reasonably long time afterward.

Client eligibility is based on need, she said.

“We try to ascertain quickly what their financial situation is,” she said. If they are not eligible, there are other avenues available, including plans to set up payment schedules, though some carry high interest rates. Other plans offer interest-free loans for eligible pet owners to help pay for vet bills, she said.

Such plans help when it comes time to decide whether to pay for expensive treatment or have a pet euthanized.

Pet health insurance options also have grown over the past couple of decades, Voiland said. Most offer two kinds of insurance. One covers primary care, the once or twice a year visits that include all the preventive testing.

The other insurance covers emergencies and major illnesses. Premiums can be pricey as well, sometimes more than $100 a month, depending on coverage.

The insurance market is there for a reason.

“Emergency care and specialty care does tend to run beyond the means of a lot of families,” Voiland said. “There is more available now than ever before. Veterinary hospitals have MRI, linear accelerators; they provide chemotherapy and back surgery and neurosurgery. What is available to humans is more and more frequently available to pets.”

The technology can be lifesaving, Voiland said, but comes at a cost.

“Emergencies are very expensive,” she said. “As veterinarians try to stabilize an animal, they have to determine very quickly what is wrong so they can treat the animal. There is a lot of testing — X-rays and ultrasounds — and that can get pretty pricey pretty quickly.”

Back surgeries always are costly, she said. Animals with back injuries can set owners back $5,000, she said, depending on the treatment.

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The cost of veterinary care is on the rise, according to a 2011 report by the American Pet Products Association, which said vet fees have risen 47 percent for dogs and 73 percent for cats from what they were 10 years ago.

The report says pet owners spent about $8 billion on vet care in 2000; by 2013, they shelled out more than $14 billion. On average, a dog owner will spend $235 a year on routine vet visits, and a cat owner, $196, the association says.

For surgical visits, dog owners, on average, spent $551 a year; cat owners, $398.

Aside from the expensive technology that has found its way into animal hospitals, vets these days are getting paid more for their time.

The Veterinary Medical Association said the mean annual professional income of private practice veterinarians was about $60,000 in 1995 and rose by one-third to over $90,000 in 2007. Now high-end veterinarians can make about $150,000 a year.

Veterinarians have argued that the 1995 figure had not changed in years and that part of the reason for the recent increases was to help pay the rising costs of education.

Veterinarians also are taking a financial hit with the advent of online pharmacies where pet owners can bypass vets’ offices and get cheaper medications, eliminating that revenue stream. The result is that fees for procedures cost more, and in some cases they have risen beyond the ability of some pet owners to pay.

With nearly 100 million homes in the United States housing pets of one kind or another, many pet owners can’t afford even the basic vet care.

“An estimated 23 million pets in the United States are in homes where their caretakers live at or below the poverty level, and that typically leaves the animals without access to veterinary care,” said Humane Society of the United States CEO Wayne Pacelle in a November 2014 blog. “That’s three or four times the number of pets who end up in shelters each year.”

Frankie’s Friends, which helps pay treatment costs for nearly 1,750 animals a year across the nation, is funded entirely by donations. According to IRS records, in 2013, the most recent available, Frankie’s Friends, which is based in New York but has an office in Tampa, showed total revenue of nearly $700,000 and spent all but about $6,000 of it. Since 2009, the nonprofit group has collected more than $3 million in contributions.

“We do well,” CEO Voiland said. “I’m not surprised. Most of our donors are people of means and want to make the same treatments their pets have received available to families who can’t afford them.

“These are folks who understand and believe that pets are members of the family.”

If you have a Pet and the situation that fits this, Do check out Frankies Friends!!