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An Affordability Crisis in Veterinary Care

By Jennifer Ryan, Executive Director, Palmer & Riley Animal Care


We rescued Riley in 2013 from a high-kill shelter in Georgia. She was two years old at the time and it was clear Riley had been mistreated. She is still afraid of sticks, canes, and golf clubs, but we eventually earned her trust and Riley has been a core part of our family for more than a decade.


At 14 ½, Riley is in good health overall, but she has always had a touchy stomach. Occasionally, she will sneak away and snack on some rabbit droppings in our flower bed.  A few hours later, our sweet pup will be flat out, vomiting and pooping uncontrollably for days if we don’t take her to the vet right away.


We love our local vet, but it can be hard to get an appointment on short notice and, like most vet clinics, ours is not open on evenings and weekends. When they are booked, our vet kindly refers us to one of the few urgent care hospitals in the area that allow walk-in visits in the evening. Upon arrival, Riley and I were greeted by a full parking lot and a large sign in the lobby that said, “Wait Time – At Least 4 Hours.” The front desk staff person confirmed that the wait would indeed be four hours, maybe three if we got lucky. She also informed us that the fee for the initial assessment would be $400, and that was before any actual treatment would be provided.  


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A System-Wide Affordability Crisis

Stories like this are all too familiar to many pet parents – urgent care clinics are often overwhelmed, wait times are hours long, and care is too expensive – prohibitively expensive for many families.


Nationally, the cost of veterinary care has increased so significantly in recent years – more than 60 percent in the past decade – that simply owning a pet has become a luxury in many communities.[i]  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the cost of pet care increased at a rate three times higher than the overall rate of inflation in 2024.[ii] The cost of dog food alone has increased by 50% since 2020.[iii]

 

The New York Times, The Atlantic, and the Minnesota Star Tribune have all published deep investigative pieces recently exploring the root of this problem. The research has concluded that the dramatic price increases for veterinary care directly correlate with the nationwide trend of private equity firms buying up independent vet clinics and animal hospitals over the past 15 years. Today, an estimated 25-30% of primary care clinics and 75% of specialty clinics are owned by corporations. In 2010, only eight (8) percent of vet clinics and hospitals were under corporate ownership.[iv]  

 

For example, the JAB Holding Company owns National Veterinary Associates’ 1,000-plus hospitals as well as several pet insurance companies. Shore Capital Partners, which also owns several human health care companies, controls Mission Veterinary Partners and Southern Veterinary Partners. Mars Candy operates more than 2,000 clinics across the country under various names including Banfield, Blue Pearl, and VCA.[v]


The unchecked growth in the cost of veterinary care has had pervasive and life-changing  consequences for many families. More than half of the 2,500 pet owners who responded to a 2024 survey by Gallup and Pet Smart Charities reported they had to forego needed veterinary care for their pet in the last year due to cost. Indeed, 37% of those owners reported that they had visited a vet clinic but ultimately declined the recommended treatment for their pet.[vi]

 

Further, 73% of the pet owners who declined treatment report they were not presented lower-cost treatment options, leaving families with the heart wrenching choice between euthanizing their pet or overextending themselves financially. This scenario has become so common that it now has a name – “economic euthanasia.”

 

“One vet, who worked for an emergency-services practice that, they said, raised prices by 20 percent in 2022, told me, ‘I almost got to the point where I was ashamed to tell people what the estimate was for things because it was so insanely high.’”

– Helen Olen, The Atlantic

 

Our first article focused on the many physical and emotional health benefits of having a pet. Our furry friends provide unconditional love and have a calming presence that helps reduce stress and can lower the cortisol levels in our brains.

 

Unfortunately, the rising cost of veterinary care is having a chilling effect on pet ownership, particularly among lower-income populations. For example, a 2024 study found that more than half of families earning less than $50,000 per year are likely to live in housing situations that restrict pet ownership. Of the study’s respondents who reported surrendering their pets, 23% cited housing as the reason.[vii]  Lower income populations are disproportionately affected by Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), which in turn increases the likelihood of negative health outcomes in adulthood – precisely the communities that should be able to benefit from pet ownership.[viii]


Impact on Clinical Teams

Corporate consolidation, price increases, and the prevalence of “economic euthanasia” has negatively affected clinical teams across the country. Veterinarians report experiencing pressure to push costly treatments and order more tests in service of increasing profit margins. One vet in California said she quit her job because she was told her “cost per client” was not high enough; another reported that their managers pressured the vets to hone their skills in “getting the client to yes” with respect to recommending expensive tests and treatments.[ix]  

 

Veterinarians make less than human doctors across the board but similarly face significant debt from student loans. Salaries for Veterinary Technicians – who need at least a 2-year associate’s degree to become certified and frequently come out of school with debt – typically top out around $50,000/year.

 

Veterinary teams work long hours in high stress and emotionally charged environments – not an ideal scenario for employee retention. Up to 30% of vets report that they plan to leave the field within five years.[x] Staffing shortages, particularly in rural areas, have left many pet owners without access to a local vet clinic, requiring long drives on top of unaffordable prices to care for their pets.[xi] Even more alarming, a 2019 study by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) found that veterinarians are up to four times more likely to die by suicide than the general population.[xii]

 

We believe we can do better.

We have created a non-profit organization, Palmer & Riley Animal Care whose mission is to establish an emergency and specialty care hospital designed to make high-quality, compassionate care affordable and accessible – 24 hours a day, 7 days per week.

 

For over a year, we have been researching locations, interviewing veterinarians, conducting focus groups with small business owners, talking with designers and architects, and understanding the dynamics of creating a new business and care-delivery model. We have run the numbers, drafted business plans; and talked with banks and philanthropists.

 

The work continues, but we have settled on three overarching goals for Palmer & Riley:

  • A compassionate, lower stress care experience for pets and “their people;”

  • Transparent, affordable pricing for all; and

  • A positive work environment for the clinical team that will help support a long-term pipeline of veterinary professionals.

 

Thank you for taking the time to read this article.  We would be grateful if you would share it with others who might be interested! 


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ENDNOTES


[i]   K. Thomas, “Why You’re Paying Your Veterinarian So Much,”  Bureau of Labor Statistics, as cited in the NY Times, June 30, 2024, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/23/health/pets-veterinary-bills.html

 

[ii] U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Consumer Price Index: 2025,” October 24, 2025, available at https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cpi.pdf

 

[iii] “The Rising Cost of Dog Food.” Total Vet, accessed on January 7, 2026 at  https://total.vet/the-rising-cost-of-dog-food/?srsltid=AfmBOopzYhl1yAa1cUks793ihJY0-TUp8nXABcGUQn-XWq0plium3SIt

 

[iv] C. Gyles, “Challenges for small animal medicine,” The Canadian Veterinary Journal, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3022445/, 2011.

 

[v] H. Olen, “Why Your Vet Bill is So High,” The Atlantic, April 25, 2024, available at https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/vet-private-equity-industry/678180/;

K. Thomas, “The Cost of Caring for Pets,” New York Times, June 23, 2024, available at

 

[vi] L. Roch, “More Minnesotans are Giving Up Their Pets as Costs Rise,” Minnesota Star Tribune, July 5, 2025, available at https://www.startribune.com/more-minnesotans-are-giving-up-their-pets-as-costs-rise/601368448 and Z. Hyronowsky, J. Lall, “52% of Pet Owners Skipped or Declined Veterinary Care,” Gallup News, April 15, 2025, available at https://news.gallup.com/poll/659057/pet-owners-skipped-declined-veterinary-care.aspx.

 


[viii] S. Aasen Nilsen, R.L. Radick, K. Gartner Askeland, “Poor family finances, family-based adverse childhood experiences, and depressive and behavioral symptoms in adolescence,” National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine, February 7, 2025, available at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12238118/; and S. Ratcliff, K. Finlay, J. Papp, M. Kearns, P. Holditch Niolon, and C. Peterson, Adverse Childhood Experiences: increased Likelihood of Socioeconomic Disadvantages in Young Adults, Health Affairs, January 2025, available at https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2024.00827


[ix] K. Thomas, “Why You’re Paying Your Veterinarian So Much,”  New York Times, June 30, 2024, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/23/health/pets-veterinary-bills.html

 

[x] American Animal Hospital Association, “Stay, Please,” February 16, 2024, available at https://www.aaha.org/resources/white-paper-factors-that-support-retentionand-drive-attrition-in-the-veterinary-profession/

 

[xi]  L. Roch, “More Minnesotans are Giving Up Their Pets as Costs Rise,” Minnesota Star Tribune, July 5, 2025, available at https://www.startribune.com/more-minnesotans-are-giving-up-their-pets-as-costs-rise/601368448

 

[xii] Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, “Suicide among Veterinarians in the United States between 1979 through 2015,” Journal of the American Veterinary Association, January 1, 2019, available at https://avmajournals.avma.org/view/journals/javma/254/1/javma.254.1.104.xml and

National Library of Medicine, “Suicide in Veterinary Medicine: A Literature Review, June 8, 2023, available at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10421543/

 

 
 
 
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