Pet health care takes bigger bite

See Spot run.

Run, Spot, run.

See Spot run up a $2,000 bill for high-tech cancer treatment, causing Dick and Jane to freak out and think maybe they shouldn’t be spending that kind of money on a dog in a down economy. Though he really is a good ol’ dog and has been like a member of the family for years, always great with the kids — ohmigosh, what will they say?

The growth of sophisticated veterinary techniques — along with many pets’ rise to the status of family members — is leading to an animal health care quandary. It isn’t as dramatic as the human version still playing out in Washington, but it has parallels:

Ÿ Costs are up. Despite the recession, Americans spent $12 billion on veterinary care last year, up 8 percent over the previous year, according to the American Pet Products Association, a trade group. It expects the figure to hit $12.8 billion in 2010.

ŸA big reason spending is higher is the technology now available. CT scans. Root canals. Digital endoscopy. More options mean more ethical dilemmas: Try the expensive, experimental treatment? Or choose a cheaper, less stressful approach and enjoy the days Spot has left? How do you gauge quality of life when the patient can’t talk? What role should euthanasia play?

ŸEconomic pressure is complicating decisions. For instance, the Nebraska Humane Society in Omaha reports more people surrendering pets because they can’t afford medical care for them.

ŸHealth insurance for pets is gradually becoming more popular as high-tech, high-dollar treatments for the furry set raise the classic question: Get coverage or try to pay medical bills out of pocket?

Former Omaha TV meteorologist Dean Wysocki, 42, can relate.

In May, he said, Gracey, the Labrador-greyhound he calls “my kid,” who had gone from joyously scrambling up trees in pursuit of squirrels to a stumbling walk, received a tough diagnosis: probable brain tumor.

The doc said confirmation would require an MRI, a procedure no longer rare in pet medicine, and referred Wysocki to specialists at Kansas State University, one of the top veterinary schools in the country.

Some $1,800 later, Gracey’s tumor was confirmed, and Wysocki was referred to surgeons at the University of Minnesota. They told him that an operation was possible, that it might buy 10-year-old Gracey one or two more years but would require trips to Minneapolis for post-surgical chemotherapy. The tab: between $3,000 and $5,000.

That made him gulp.

“I said, oh my God, what do I do? Take out a loan?” And what about Gracey? he thought. The travel and the treatments would be hard on her at age 10 — canine senior citizenhood — and for what?

Agonizing over the decision, he returned to Gracey’s primary vet, Dr. Kimberly Weber of Lincoln. What would you do? he asked.

After discussing the dog’s age and the stress of surgery, they decided to try steroids instead, which wouldn’t combat the tumor but could reduce brain swelling. Weber said it might buy Gracey another six to eight months. Cost: about $13 a month.

Now the dog “is back to her old self,” Wysocki said. She’s bounding and happy, no longer tripping and “wobbling like a drunken sailor.” The two are relishing whatever time together they have left.

“I really think it’s going to be longer” than six months, he said. “She’s a fighter.”

In the end, he said, the treatment choice was clear. “Quality of life was the absolute, deciding factor.”

That concern illustrates the underlying change in the way people think about America’s 94 million cats and 78 million dogs, said Dr. Louise Murray, a veterinarian with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

“Pets have become members of our family sometime in the last decades,” she said. The feeling may vary — perhaps stronger in cities than where animals traditionally had to earn their keep — but it is spreading, she said.

It’s evident even in pet names, she added: She used to treat Blackie or Fluffy. Now it’s more often Elizabeth or Henry.

So if Henry’s diagnosis is dire, people who once might have said, “Well, his time has come,” now want treatment options, Murray said. They’re willing to pay and unabashedly say why.

“Even the guy with tattoos comes in and says, ‘This is my baby!’”

Murray said she bristles when she hears someone ask, “How can you spend $500 on your cat when there are starving children in the world?” The same person wouldn’t challenge $500 for a cruise or a flat-screen TV, she said.

Moreover, pet and human medicine have long had a mutually beneficial relationship. Experimental technologies often are pioneered on animals, then migrate to human use when they’ve proved themselves, said Omaha vet Dr. Peter Bashara. Then the technologies mature, become more economical and are adapted for widespread use on animals, he said. And the cycle repeats.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s vet school boasts that a surgical technique developed to repair torn knee ligaments in dogs was so successful that it’s now being used on NFL players, according to the Associated Press.

The Animal Medical Center in New York City, a nonprofit that specializes in advanced care, says pets’ arthritic joints are now being healed with stem cell transplants not yet approved for humans. Cost: $4,000.

With more options have come more ethical dilemmas — what treatments to choose, whether to pursue “heroic measures,” when to resort to euthanasia. Learning how to help pet owners through the moral thicket is a standard part of vet students’ training, said Dr. Ronnie Elmore, who teaches “Ethics and Jurisprudence” at Kansas State.

For some owners, the dilemma has become, “Do I fix the dog, or do I feed the kids for the next month?” said Pam Wiese, spokeswoman for the Nebraska Humane Society in Omaha. “We do have some people who come in to the shelter and say, ‘My dog needs an operation that I can’t afford.’”

Neither President Barack Obama nor Congress has moved to overhaul pet health care, though a House bill — introduced last summer but still in committee — would make pet care expenses tax-deductible. Most pets remain uninsured.

But pet health insurance is a growing industry. Polling by the pet products trade group indicates that 3 percent of American dogs and 1 percent of cats have coverage, up from nearly zero a decade ago.

The ASPCA says it has sold 80,000 policies since starting to offer them in 2006. Monthly premiums begin at about $8 for cats and $10 for dogs, with a $100 annual deductible. They rise quickly depending on age of the animal and the level of coverage.

But Richard File, a breeder of Bernese mountain dogs when he isn’t teaching accounting at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, said the policies have too many exemptions and exclusions. Instead of insurance, he keeps a sort of health care savings account for his three canine children.

On the other hand, Wysocki, who endured Gracey’s health scare and is now cherishing her twilight, is sold. He shudders to think of the decision he’d have faced had Gracey’s brain tumor appeared years sooner.

“Buy pet insurance when your dog is young,” he said.

Contact the writer:

444-1140, roger.buddenberg@owh.com

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