Health care is expensive! When engaging with the human medical system, the real costs of your care are often completely obscured by a complex web of interactions between insurance companies and the “provider” of the care (which is never your actual doctor, but a person or entity that exclusively handles the cost aspect of the job). What was the actual fee? You’ll likely never have a clue, since these costs are partially paid on the front end with your insurance premiums and are then sliced and diced by the various contracts held between your provider and the insurance company. Health care coverage in this country comes with a massive, invisible industry nestled in between you and the person who’s meant to listen to your heart or gag you with a tiny plank of wood. The purpose of that industry is to digest the costs in one format and excrete them in a different format. Transparency is really not their strong suit.
In veterinary medicine, on the other hand, you’ll be able to see all the fees with crystal clarity from beginning to end. That’s true even if your pet has health insurance due to the current structure of animal medical coverage—an out-of-pocket model wherein you see (and pay) the total bill before being reimbursed in accordance with your policy. Coming face to face with these numbers can be disconcerting even if you are expecting reimbursement, since most pet owners have previously been shielded from the real cost of medicine by an army of calculator-wielding insurance executives.
It is critically important to face these numbers head-on, however. You’ll be asked to approve what’s about to be spent on your pet before the actual health care procedures take place, and you will be responsible for that amount when all is said and done. That said, veterinary care doesn’t have as much in common with your auto mechanic as you might guess; it’s far more chaotic and complicated. I have heard that the cars never attack their health care provider and also that a car in need of repair has never unexpectedly gone into cardiac arrest while at the mechanic. This inherent instability of medicine means costs will sometimes have to change on the fly, but (at my practice, at least) you will always be kept fully informed about what is happening with your bill. You absolutely have the right to that, regardless of whether you will be paying the full amount out of pocket or expecting a reimbursement from your insurance. If you ever feel that you are trying to make decisions in the financial dark, you must ask for clarification. Your pet’s health problems are stressful enough without wondering how much you’ll owe at the end of the day.
Transparency about your bill is just one of the ways in which veterinary medicine outperforms its human counterpart. It gives you a considerable measure of control over the process and makes you a full partner on the health care team. As you’ll see in our next piece, this can work to your advantage, but it also poses some substantial challenges.
Dr. M.S. Regan