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DENIS THOET: Matilda’s very bad day leads to health insurance epiphany

Last Friday the 13th, of all days, was an epiphany for me. True to form, it started with near-tragedy, followed by redemption and then enlightenment!

About midday, Matilda, our 16-month-old Angus heifer, spooked herself right into a gate hook near the sheep pasture, which I should have taken out when I removed the gate a week ago, laying open her right shoulder with a gash about a foot-and-a-half long.

As soon as I saw the size of the cut, I knew it would not heal on its own. So I called our large-animal veterinarian, who arrived a few hours later in his Vetmobile.

He jumped into the cow pen with his anesthetic syringe, walked up to the normally shy Matilda and gave her the shot. Within minutes, she was down.

He shaved around the wound, sprayed the area with Lanocain and began inspecting the gash. It was deep — through the hide and muscle down to white cartilage. I realized I was looking at a preview of next winter’s shoulder roast.

For a good five minutes, he irrigated and cleaned the gash and then began suturing. I held a flashlight in one hand and kept tension on the sutures with the other. In a half-hour, after a shot of antibiotics and an antidote to the anesthetic, Matilda was up and about.

The vet prescribed three days of “bed rest” (confinement to the stall and some fly spray), and he would check on her Monday. Total bill: $176. That included a house call and follow-up, anesthetic, surgery and a good outcome for the patient.

That was $176. Not $1,176. Not $5,176.

So here’s the epiphany (I love that word): In the United States, outside of our population of 300 million humans, we have a population of 250 million living beings (cats, dogs, cows, horses, sheep and goats, believe me, I’ve checked the numbers) who already have health coverage — let’s call it vetcare.

And guess what, no health insurance is involved, just straight cash payments for services rendered. There is, I understand, a minor movement toward health insurance for pets, costing $30 to 40 per month. I view this as an ominous trend — unless pet owners can add themselves to the policy for a nominal amount.

Guess what again, it’s not a socialist plot. It’s as American as apple pie, and maybe even predates socialism by a few decades. So, instead of Obamacare, or the public option, or universal health care, or all the other failed attempts over the last two years, our goal should be to extend vetcare into human population in the United States.

How to do this? The first step is transparency:

Publish all the costs for veterinary medical procedures (fractures, surgeries, X-rays, MRIs, cancer treatments, medications, etc.) and compare them to similar human medical treatments.

In Maine, much of this information already has been made public.  A May 16 story in the Maine Sunday Telegram found vast differences in hospital charges throughout the state, without — sorry to say — naming specific hospitals. You’ll have to find that out on your own. 

Then, use those numbers as bargaining chips when you enter your doctor’s office, or need surgery, or when you are doubled over in pain in the emergency room.

“Thirty thousand dollars for a hip replacement?” you would say. “Sorry, doctor, my vet can do it for $1,000 per hip.” (My dog-owning sister, Anne, from Middletown, N.Y., said that’s what a nearby vet charges for hip replacements — on dogs, of course.)

Let the marketplace take over from there. Finally, a free-enterprise medical system that includes real costs, real competition, and even a little profit for the providers. The best part is the system is already in place, just waiting for expansion into a whole new, and very lucrative market — human beings.

Of course, an epiphany (that word again) is just a beginning, not an end. Other details need to be worked out, such as are you willing to lie down in the hay and be operated on by someone more used to cows and horses? And, do you really want your medical files to list you by first name only?

To me, it beats shelling out $15,000 in health insurance premiums per family per year just to get any treatment at all. 



Denis Thoet and his partner, Michele Roy, own and manage Long Meadow Farm in West Gardiner. www.longmeadowfarmmaine.com.

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