Children Deserve Veterinary Care Too

This year, Americans will spend about $9.8 billion on health care for their pets, up from $7.2 billion five years ago. According to the New York Times, New York’s leading pet hospitals offer CT scans, MRI’s, dialysis units, and even a rehab clinic featuring an underwater treadmill, perhaps for the amphibians in one’s household. A professor who consults to pet health facilities on communication issues justified these huge investments in pet health to me by pointing out that pets are, after all, “part of the family.”

Well, there’s another category that might reasonably be considered “part of the family.” True, they are not the ideal companions for the busy young professional: It can take two to three years to housebreak them; their standards of personal hygiene are lamentably low, at least compared to cats; and large numbers of them cannot learn to “sit” without the aid of Ritalin.

I’m talking about children, of course, and while I can understand why many people would not one of these hairless and often incontinent bipeds in their homes, it is important to point out that they can provide considerable gratification. There’s a three-year-old in my life, for example, who gives me many hours a week of playful distraction from the pressures of work. No matter how stressed I am, she can brighten my mood with her quavering renditions of the ABC song or “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

She has health insurance, as it turns out, and generally high quality care. But you can never be too sure. So I went to the website of VPI Pet Insurance, one of the nation’s largest animal companion health insurers, to see what kind of a policy I could get for her. In the application form, I listed her as a three-year-old mixed breed dog – a description made somewhat plausible by the fact that her first words, spoken at the remarkable age of 10 months, were “ruf ruf” and “doggie outside.” When I completed the form and clicked to get a quote I was amazed to see that I get her a “premium” policy for a mere $33 a month.

But, you may be wondering, could a veterinarian handle common children’s ills? On the hopeful side, let me cite the case, reported in June by Bob Herbert of the New York Times, of Diamonte Driver, a 12-year old boy who died recently from an abscessed tooth because he had no insurance and his mother could not afford $80 to have the tooth pulled. Could a vet have handled this problem? Yes, absolutely.

Or there’s the case of 14-year old Devante Johnson, also reported by Herbert, who died when his health insurance ran out in the middle of treatment for kidney cancer. I don’t know exactly what kind of treatment he was getting, but I suspect that the $1.25 million linear accelerator for radiation therapy available at one of New York’s leading pet hospitals might have helped. The Times article also mentions a mixed breed named Bullwinkle who consumed $7000 worth of chemotherapy before passing on to his reward. Surely Devante could have benefited from the same kind of high quality pet care, delivered at a local upscale animal hospital.

It may seem callous to focus on children when so many pets go uninsured and without access to CT-scans or underwater treadmills. But in many ways, children stack up well compared to common pets. They can shed real tears, like Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs. They can talk as well as many of the larger birds, or at least mimic human speech. And if you invest enough time in their care and feeding, they will jump all over you when you arrive at the door, yipping and covering your face with drool.

The Senate Finance Committee has approved a bill that would expand state health insurance cover for children (S-CHIP) to include 3.2 million kids who are not now covered (but leaving about 6 million still uncovered.) Bush has promised to veto this bill, on the grounds that government should not be involved in health coverage. If does veto the bill, the fallback demand should be: Open up pet health insurance to all American children now! Though even as I say this, I worry that the president will counter by proposing to extend euthanasia services to children who happen to fall ill.

Comments

[mdc]

A Little Bird tells me that Babs is so het up about the subject of insuring Da Pweshus Cheeeldrunnnnn because her son, who is uninsured, broke either his arm or his leg and the bills came out to more than $12,000+.

Somehow, I think she'll be able to keep her apartment in Manhattan. Meanwhile, I'm struggling because I've had to pay out of pocket for dental work plus an ER visit last winter. But I'm not a Pweshus Chyyyulllld, so who gives a shit, right?

[Minerva]

It's a shame that Barbara makes light of so crucial a subject. No, the vet couldn't treat the boy's tooth abscess because veterinarians cannot legally treat humans.
The health care crises in this country affects young and old alike. It has nothing to do with liberalism or any other "ism." It certainly has nothing to do with how much people spend in veterinary bills.
I find this blog simple minded and foolish. The blogger's time would be better spent campaigning for health care for ALL citizens instead of comparing her kid to pets.
Any by the way, who is she to dictate how people spend their money? If I want to buy my kitty a diamond studded collar it's not taking anything away from her precious 3-year-old.
Not that I would buy such a collar, although my cat would look pretty darn good one. The point is, it's my choice.
I support Universal health coverage for everyone. Not just kids. And I support the right for people to spend their money any way they choose.

[River]

This is unbelievable. How does one person's personal spending choice effect you? Here's how: It doesn't. Someone paying out of pocket to insure their beloved pet doesn't take any insurance or money away from your child. It doesn't cost anything for anyone but the person who pays for it - which is far more than I can say for children!

Let's face it: This country has a tax crisis. More than half of all bankruptcies are filed because of overwhelming medical debt. But it isn't the children we should be worrying about here - in an ideal world (haha) parents who can't afford children wouldn't have them, and we wouldn't have this problem - but the adults.

Adults, who work, pay taxes, vote, and all that other good stuff, are going without insurance because they simply cannot afford it. Elderly Americans are going without because they simply cannot work anymore. Parents and children get so many benefits from the state that it's crazy - child tax credits, a higher income cutoff for foodstamps, WIC, insurance help, discounted healthcare programs, etcetera - but people who don't have children? Don't count on anything. Frankly, if you can't afford to feed, clothe, and yes, insure, a child, don't have one! It's that simple!

I know the world isn't perfect, and this country is far from it too, but there is this such thing as common sense, yes?

Furthermore, I believe in universal health care. I believe that everyone should be insured by the government - and by everyone, I mean children and adults both. If my taxes are paying for your child's insurance, I damn well want to be paying for mine, too, and my friends', and my neighbors. Not everything is about the children.

[AvMeYt]

Interesting article- the jumping off point of comparison-from pets to children does highlight that pet insurance is affordable and high quality of care in pets is not out of control the way it is in humans- but the two cases are not in any way comparable and the descriptions of children and pets in the same paragraph misleadingly leads one to think that pets are getting such care at the cost of children. It's a logical fallacy and pure sensationalism. The truth is that most veterinary care is paid for out of disposable income, in effect making it a luxury commodity. This being the case maybe the article should talk about how people pay for disposable items like cars, t.v.'s etc yet children don't get adequate care. Pets are a luxury in many respects, one which I treasure and enjoy and wish everyone had that opportunity. But they do cost to take care of as well- and pet ownership is an obligation. As a veterinarian I believe that every being on this earth deserves good care. Also, advances in veterinary medicine often drive human medicine- although this goes both ways, from animal research to human care back to animal clinical care. While I know it wasn't the intent of this article, there are often things written that basically attack medical care for pets when we have people in this country not getting care. That is a non-starter, and avoids the real issues of why our system is breaking down, what we value and don't value, and our lack as a country of basic understanding of the need for preventative care from the youngest ages- something that will only benefit the country as a whole- and cannot be left to market forces.

[Maura A.]

It's obvious that this blog has sparked some fierce controversy. As a veterinary student who is also working towards a degree in public health, I very much understand the concern about uninsured children and agree that reforms are way overdue; however, I feel that Barbara made an odd comparison between human healthcare and veterinary healthcare as she was comparing government sponsored care to a open, free-choice market. Another thing to keep in mind when getting heated that pets receive better care than you do is that their care can be extremely costly and the fact is that most pet owners do not subscribe to pet insurance. There are also many gaps to pet insurance (as with human health insurance)- many times it will not pay for a procedure if the pet has a pre-existing condition and there is always a cap to the amount the company will subsidize a procedure. Just recently at my University's clinic there was a case in which an animal racked up a $19,000 bill and you better believe that pet insurance does not cover the bulk of that. Deductibles are also usually higher than with human health insurance. The average American does not spend hundreds or thousands of dollars extra to take their pet to the specialists that you have described, though they are available to those that can afford it. Please also keep in mind that not everyone is fit to be a parent to a child and some people have made the choice to have pets as companions in their lives. These people are entitled to have the choice to give their animals the best healthcare that is available. You, yourself, may not feel it necessary to see premium care for your pet but there are thousands of people that do and they should not be criticized or mocked. Pet health insurance is a choice that some owners choose to make. Human health insurance is a right instilled by our goverment. Your frustrations are well-understood, but alas, poorly misdirected.

[Joni]

Roger, you seem to try very hard to grasp the issues discussed in the blog, but your repeated invoking of the Bush and euthanasia bit makes me wonder: Do you understand that Ms. Ehrenreich was using satire, and not seriously suggesting that Bush would consider extending euthanasia to children?

And I wanted to share with you how I understand health care for pets and health care for children to be related. It's not in a neat and compartmentalized, "this equation equals that" kind of way, as I think you might be inclined to see things. It's more of a general lament that because we treat healthcare as a commodity to be bought and sold, the pets of the affluent have more access to it than the (human!) children of the poor. That we as a society allow this to happen is what is so outrageous.

Should the rich stop getting CT scans for their dogs? No, that would be missing the point. The point is that if these things are available for pets, they ought damn sure to be available for any human child who needs them.

One of the reasons healthcare is so expensive, they say, is because so many people need it. The higher the demand in a supply & demand market, the higher the cost of the commodity. So in a way, we already have waiting lists for healthcare just like the nations with universal healthcare. The difference is that instead of being ranked by need, we are all ranked by our ability to pay. And the thought of a dog getting put ahead of a human because the human lacks the ability to pay ought to make any person ill.