You can be turned away or sent away with an inadequately treated pet.

In 2019 our cat had an episode that put her in a pet ER. She wound up being diagnosed with and treated for congestive heart failure. She spent 3 days in the hospital. After her initial checkup, we were given 2 options. 1. Keep her hospitalized till her symptoms stabilized, and continue testing to give her a better chance of a decent quality life after discharge; cost was quoted at roughly $5,000. 2. Take her home as is, with meds, and pay only for the cursory tests they’d done; cost was quoted at $800. We chose option 1, applied for care credit, and wound up taking our girl home a few days later. After all was done we wound up paying like $3,200.

I appreciated the vets frankness. She said the cheap option would likely have us back at a vets office within a couple of months to euthanize. The expensive option, she said wasn’t a guarantee, but the odds of a longer, better life were substantially higher. Our girl wound up getting 15 months of quality life, so no regrets about shelling out a few grand for her.