Pet food? Pet health care and food? No, dear reader, Dr Fine is not crazy. There is actually a link.
In the Wall Street Journal on February 10, prominent Wall Street Journal columnist Holman Jenkins, who argues for much-needed military aid to Ukraine, said that by spending an extra $35 billion, Russia is trying to fool the US and Western. Europe to withdraw and withdraw from Ukraine, which would be a disaster for democracy and for the free world. I totally agree with Mr. Jenkins about that. As he made his argument, however, Mr. Holman said that $35 billion is a quarter of what the US spends annually on pet supplies, to give the $35 billion Russia is threatening to spend some context.
And that got me thinking about the numbers because if $35 billion is a quarter of what we spend on pet supplies, that means we’re spending about four times that amount — or $140 billion — in pet supplies, a number that resonated with me.
This rang a bell because I knew we spend about $165 billion on primary care every year in the US. If Mr. Holman is right, we spend almost as much on our pets as we do on providing basic health care to all people in America. It’s not possible, is it?
So I did a little fact check. I looked up the number, and if the dear Mr. Holman did not get the mark. He was off by a factor of two. It turns out, according to Forbes, that we spend $70 billion on pet supplies, not $140 billion.
I think we can forgive Mr. Holman for confusing a quarter with a half because, at the end of the day, none of us should really care how much Americans spend on pet supplies. (We must be careful desperate (about supporting Ukraine, and defeating Putin, the last thing we need right now is another tinhorn dictator of the Russian description – the world has seen more than enough of those.)
But there is still a lesson here. Fifty-seven percent of American adults, or approximately 148 million people, do not have a family doctor aka primary care clinician/practice. Getting every American a family doctor aka primary care clinician/practice costs $74 billion, which is about the amount Americans spend on pet supplies. Which means we could build a health care system in the US for what we spend on dog food, more or less. Cost, to pervert a metaphor, is just chicken feed.
That we haven’t built a health care system that provides basic care to all Americans is just crazy. For the cost of kitty litter! For the next nothing, we can really keep health care in America from going to the dogs.
Makes a grown man want to cry.
