Dentists are the single biggest predators in the medical profession. Closely followed by Vets.
I can say that as I come from a long line of dental professionals and I have dogs. lol
I will come to the defence of vets, well my vet anyway.
I agree veterinary expenses can be high, but when our cat fell ill he had to be seen by the vet. Our suspicion of diabetes was confirmed (my wife is a type 1 diabetic and had had the condition for over 45 years, so we have considerable experience of the illness). Of course we didn't have insurance, but that was and still is our choice.
Long story short, the cat's diabetes was only a symptom of a disease called acromegally. High doses of insulin only kept blood sugar levels stable, but very high. We had to visit the vet at least four times a week, sometimes twice a day, over a period of two and a half years. I did all of the blood tests instead of the having them done at the vets, a massive saving in costs.
Our vet gave us a huge discount on the special food and sold us near expiry date insulin very cheaply (a bottle of insulin only lasted us a week and normal retial price was arouind £42, we paid something like £15 a bottle, sometimes less if the bottle had been used for a hospital patient).
We gave up adding up what our cat cost us in his last three years of life, but it was well over £10,000, but if our vet charged us the full rate for every thing it would have been well over £30,000, he rarely charged us consultaion fees, but as he said, he learnt far more about acromegally treating our cat than he did in his previous 12 years experience.
