$1,000, $2,000, the economy hitting every member of the household, including the little furry four-legged ones.

One in five pet owners carry at least $2,000 in pet-related debt.

This is according to a new study from MetLife Pet Insurance.

Do you have pet insurance for your cat or

your dog? I don't know how I feel about that. With the price of veterinarian care going up,

maybe it makes sense, but then, no, it's just another expense up front. Well, this is being driven by two things.

Massive increases in the price of veterinarian care right now, and what's driving that is the fact

that more and more veterinary operations are owned by private equity. So the price of veterinary

care has gone up 40% since 2020. That's twice the rate

of inflation. And in the last 10 years, 10 years ago, 10% of vets were owned by private equity.

And now it's between 35 and 50% of vets are owned by private equity. So it used to be you want to be a

veterinarian. Okay, you go to school, you get your degree, you're a veterinarian, and then you open up your own veterinarian shop, and you're kind of a mom-and-pop operation, and you run that.

Well, now when somebody does that frequently, they're flipping that and selling that to a private equity group that may own hundreds or thousands of veterinarian care centers across the

country. They try and consolidate. They cut costs. They squeeze you on price, raise the price so they

can make as much money and profit as possible. And so with the fact that vet prices are up 40%

over the last five years, that's pretty significant. It's outrageous. I mean, look, inflation's been crazy. For as much as you hate the fact that groceries are up a ton in the last five years and that housing costs are up a lot in the last five years and your electric bills up a lot in the last five years, now I've got to worry about vet prices, doubling that in increases in the last five years. It's crushing for a lot of people.

Well, and you also have not only the vet care, but the specialized pet food and also general

inflation in supplies.

So going into debt for your dog's vet bill, that's the inflation story that nobody is covering,

but it's the emotional one that really is affecting people because if you, you would go into debt to care for your pet. If you had no choice, yeah, you're going to do that. You're going to put it on your credit card if you have to. Yeah, I mean, look at what most pets are family pets. So if you've got young kids at home and you've got a dog or a cat or maybe a couple of each,

they become part of the family. And don't tell me that, you know, when your 12-year-old girl looks at you and says, can we afford Rover's surgery so that he can still be part of this family, yeah, I think the vast majority of people are going to do whatever it takes to make sure that you don't disappoint your 12-year-old little girl

and that Rover is still going to be part of your family going forward.

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