You think routine vet care is expensive?!
Last night I went out for ice cream with my brother’s family in Gainesville, FL. Together, we got 3 small cups and 2 small cones of ice cream. Do you know what five of the smallest servings at Ben & Jerry’s costs these days? $40! We spent $40 on five small scoops, no toppings, no side items, no tips. This morning, I dropped $27 on three coffee drinks at a drive-thru that had cars wrapped all the way around the building.
Am I the only one who hears continuously about how expensive vet medicine is while looking at what everything else in life costs and thinking: “Wait. You think we’re over-priced?!”
I completely understand that when people can’t afford the care their pets need, it’s tragic. Also, urgent and emergency care prices can be hard to stomach. Finally, seeing pets going without wellness care hurts my vet heart. But according to the most recent numbers from the AVMA, the average routine veterinary visit in 2026 only costs around $214 for dogs and $138 for cats. Given the training, mainpower, and personalization required to provide the service, I’m sorry, but I don’t think that’s over-priced.
I just paid for a domestic flight, stayed in a hotel, and called a plumber when I got back home about the water heater. Based on those experiences, I’m really struggling to feel that routine veterinary care pricing is “out of control” or that vet clinics should feel apologetic for what the majority of our services cost. It’s completely possible to recognize that the price of a good or service might be tragically out of someone’s reach and, at the same time, that good or service costs about what it needs to cost to exist in our current economy.
Yes routine care has gotten more expensive, but I think that’s more due to the fact that (1) veterinary medicine had been significantly under-priced since the days of James Harriott (i.e. staff have not gotten living wages and student debt has outweighed salaries), and (2) we are a medical profession, and medical inflation has significantly outpaced regular inflation for the last 20 years.
Yes, our prices have gone up quickly relative to other goods and services, but that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily over-priced. I’m not convinced routine veterinary care really has a pricing problem. I think it has a value problem.
Pet owners are about as excited to bring their pets in for routine care as you are to bring your car in for routine maintenance. Vet visits are far less fun than dining out, binge watching streaming shows, or getting bougie coffee every day on the way to work. Also, the benefits of routine care to an individual pet are basically invisible. Pet owners don’t know that their cat would have gotten FeLV if they hadn’t come in for their kitten vaccinations. They are unaware of all the times they would have hosted fleas in their home, hookworms in their yard, or parvo virus spattered on their floor. They are also less trusting than they have ever been of both vaccines and experts.
If you ask pet owners why they didn’t make it to their annual visit, the price of care is a much easier answer for them to give than “I just didn’t feel motivated by the value proposition my veterinarian has communicated.” No one is going to challenge you or make you feel guilty if you say something is unaffordable. If you say “I just didn’t want to do it,” you might be judged harshly.
This is where the battle must be fought. Prices for veterinary care, like the price of ice cream or coffee, are not going back down. We shouldn’t spend our days feeling ashamed or vilified for what medical care needs to cost to be delivered in the current economy. If we want to advocate for pets, we must do it by delivering and communicating the value of preventive care every single day.
The world has changed. The way we deliver both care and education must change with it. What should not change is the level of pride we have for our commitment, compassion, and the quality of care we deliver.
