Laissez Faire Club Blog

The contrast between veterinarians and people doctors

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I joked that the first post on the new Laissez Faire blog would be about my kitty (and if you don’t get the joke, it’s okay).

Instead, it will be about my dog.

The dog was behaving oddly, scratching his left ear more than is normal for a dog, so it occurred to me: maybe this thing has an adult-like ear infection. Of course it was off to the wonderful veterinarian, an office I love to visit because it is completely unlike a human doctor’s office. Insurance is not an issue. The doctor sees you right away. There is no interminable wait. You are treated like an actual customer instead of a groveling client. Everyone is super nice. There is a lovely informality about it all, which you notice immediately because, well, dogs and cats are walking around freely.

You and your pet see the doctor right away. The doctor is a normal person with a first name.

I was right: the dog has an ear infection. There is medicine available for that. But as the medicine is described, I’m also told the prices. This cream costs this much and this rinse costs this much. Do I want one, both, or none? Also, if I choose none, there are home remedies I could try.

All of this is unknown at a regular doctor’s office. Prices are mysterious, even unknown. Not even the doctor or receptionist knows for sure. They certainly aren’t posted. In fact, prices don’t really figure into the decision-making process at all, at least not in a way that the customer knows about. Home remedies are mostly considered quackery. Treatment is never optional. You are not shopping in any sense. And insurance and paperwork and records are an absolute must.

Why is the veterinarian office like a normal business and the human doctor’s office more like an quasi-governmental experience by comparison? Simple: there is virtually no government provision, regulation, and fiduciary involvement of bureaucracies. There is licensing, but otherwise the consumer rules, just like in normal business. By contrast, the human doctor is embroiled in a complex maze of government regulation, managements, funding, mandates, and it gets worse and worse year by year.

If you want to see how free-market medicine works, you have to visit the veterinarian office. Then you wonder: why are we as humans treated worse than the animals?

See: Rights and Regulation.

  • http://www.captialist.me/ Cory Brickner

    Jeff,

    Bravo on this example. To add to this, Vet costs, while not cheap, are affordable. We had a 15 year old Yorkie that developed kidney failure. A long story short, we were told that he had a limited amount of time. Depending on how much money we wanted to spend, there were options we could explore, but in the end, we’d have to put him to sleep as he would not die without suffering.

    Where do you *EVER* hear this in our current human medical system?! Every step of the way, we were told costs up front, and were able to plan accordingly.

    Again, it wasn’t cheap, but it allowed our family to make medical choices based on our needs and capabilities.

    Seven months later, our sweet little boy had his vet come to our house, in his comfortable environment, give him a tranquilizer, and was being held by my wife and surrounded by those who loved him while he was quietly put to rest.

    As a side note, I learned a whole lot about dog nutrition during this period; namely that mass-produced corporate dog food is 100% crap. Dogs are carnivores and require mostly meat, with some vegetables, grasses, and fruits mixed in because their prey are typically herbivores. Mass produced dog food is the same as mass produced human food, it causes allergies, cancers, and various other body ailments reacting to the nutritionally lacking and poor fuel quality being fed to it. The number one ingredient in most cheap dog foods is corn, followed by some kind of meat by product meal, then typically followed by more grains and maybe another by-product meal. Sometimes, even sugar or other sweeteners are added, and this is called a “balanced” diet for your pet. It is no wonder our pets are just as obese and unhealthy as we are!

    Good quality food, for humans or our pets, requires us to spend more money up front, but improved quality of life makes up for the lack of ailments in the long run.