Comment by eru
3 days ago
I just looked it up, and apparently health care costs for pets has gone up in price even faster than for humans.
Pets typically don't have medical insurance, and any insurance that does exist there has a radically different regulatory regime than for humans.
Since 1980 for the US:
CPI has gone up by 3.16% on average per year (x4.17 in total). Human healthcare costs by 4.9% per year (x8.96 in total). And pet healthcare costs by 6.49% (or x17.87 in total).
I suspect this has something to do with it: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/vet-privat...
That could at most explain the last few years of rising vet prices.
Technological advancement seems like a pretty big culprit here? An MRI wasn't available at any price in 1982 so the fact that it's available now makes it look like "imaging prices have gone up" even though the imaging that was available in 1982 is cheaper now than it was then.