Spending too much on your pet’s care?
Most pet owners discover the price of veterinary procedures at the cash register without realizing they could be overpaying by as much as 30x
HOBBES’ ITCHY EARS
Our five-year-old Golden Retriever, Hobbes, has allergies. When they’re particularly bad, he spends his mornings scratching his ears until they’re raw and painful. A year ago, when this first started, I rushed Hobbes to our local, trusted veterinarian for an ear examination. They prescribed some medication, referred him to a Pet Dermatologist, and charged me $142.69.
Like most pet owners, I discovered the cost of the examination at the cash register on the way out the door. There’s no menu of prices. No search engine to shop for better deals. Pet owners are at the mercy of their veterinarians.
This left me with one question: is $142.69 a fair price for a dog’s ear examination?
WHAT IS A FAIR PRICE?
After spending over $1,800 in the past twelve months on Hobbes’ care, I decided to take a look at how much it would have cost to get his ears examined at different veterinarians around the Bay Area. The lowest price I found was $62, and the highest was $371 — a difference of 6x!
After just a bit more exploring, I found that I could pay half as much for an ear examination at the vet just down the street from my vet. So not only did prices vary significantly, but they could be completely different even in local areas.
So what about prices more broadly?
With the help of some friends and fellow pet owners, I collected over 200 receipts from ear examinations from across the country. Overall, even after excluding outliers, the highest price ($1,256) was almost 30 times more expensive than the lowest ($43).
Also, while I paid $142.69 for Hobbes’ examination, that was about $80 less than the national average for the same procedure.
TRANSPARENT PRICING
In an attempt to make pricing for veterinary services a bit more transparent to the consumer, I’ve put together FairVets — a website that allows pet owners to report prices they paid. Once reported, I compile the results that users can search to get a bit more insight into what they could be paying elsewhere.
Pet insurance
While exploring what pet owners paid for different services, I also discovered that people were getting hundreds of dollars back from pet insurance providers.
On average, users reported getting back $365 per visit — 71% of their original bills — from pet insurance providers
I’ve tried to incorporate as much information on pet insurance reimbursements as possible into FairVets as well as a comparison of a few different pet insurance providers.