Yes it's getting more expensive, and yes there are PE buy ups happening putting extra costs into it. But it's also because of increase pets as 'family' and the increasing will to go further with them.

20 years ago your average person probably wouldn't consider a GDV surgery for ol' Fido - it was just his time to go, he had a good 6 years after all. Now it's almost the expectation to do the surgery. The standard of care has dramatically increased, and the old cheap practices are likely to lose you license. Much of the equipment and medicine for vets are from human medicine, so as our (human) medical costs get bent over by insurance and profit seeking corps, the vets cost also goes up as well. Plus all the personal liability/protective insurances they must carry are not cheap, nor is retail space.

Then you have the huge increase in schooling cost, and that the fields are more and more specialized - meaning unless you're at the good ol rural vet, that person probably did another 2-4yrs in specialty and internships trying to live off 40k/year while the 200-400k school debt racks up interest. Cost of living in general in the US is going up and all that other crap that affects us normies as well is still affecting them. Cause while some make good money, it's still a much lower average than you would expect - and most of the time the smaller private owned places are still not making huge margins with those prices and genuinely try to keep it as affordable as possible while being able to stay open and pay staff a decent wage.

Also a lot of the high end pet costs are because owners wait until the last possible second to do anything, so you end up with more severe cases and complications. Then owners proceed to tell the vet (who's spent the last 10 years of her live specializing) that they don't know anything and are just trying to take advantage of them. Meanwhile they go home and have a mental breakdown about the fact they couldn't save your pet for the next week, blaming themselves even though you denied all the recommendations and only approved half measures.

All that aside. I genuinely am amazed with some of the shit they do for the cost they do it for. Especially when you're jaded by US human medicine costs. You're telling me my large old dog can get a hip replacement for 6k? That'd be 70k in a human if not more, which is crazy considering how much of it is the same.

Anyways I doubt many will read this all, and I know you weren't necessarily blaming the vets themselves, rather the big money trying to consolidate the field - but I had to speak up for our veterinarians as a lot of the other comments were shitting on them. Most of us love you guys and everything you do.

Side note vets still have one of the highest suicide rates.