The cost of pet care has gone up.
Americans spent $147 billion on their pets in 2023, according to the American Pet Products Association.
Now, Congress is looking at allowing people to use tax-advantage savings accounts to cover veterinary fees and pet insurance.
"It's very expensive to be a pet owner in these days," said Shannon Hurley, a working "dog mom" of two. "We got Lyra two years ago, and we already had one Australian shepherd and in two years we've spent over $2,000 in vet bills. So, when Lyra was a puppy, she broke her front two incisors, so she had to be placed under to get those removed so that she wouldn't get an infection."
Even with pet care and veterinary costs on the rise, pet owners like Hurley do not hesitate to pay what their dogs need.
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"It's just getting more and more expensive to have a pet, and a survey that we just recently did show that almost 40% of folks with a pet said that they had gone into debt over expenses involved with their pet," said Matt Schulz, chief credit analyst of Lending Tree.
Despite the costs, pets are as popular as ever, with a 2023 survey from Statista revealing that millennials represented the biggest share of pet owners in the United States, at 33%.
Meanwhile, the cost of veterinary services in urban areas jumped by 7.6% between August 2023 and August 2024, according to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Experts attribute this to many things, from shortages of practitioners to supply chain issues.
"Certainly, supply would be an issue, but a lot of it is just coming down to inflation where the cost of everything has gone up in the last couple of years and pet care is certainly no exception to that," Schulz said.
Many veterinary companies maintain that costs are being pushed up by a tight labor market and higher demand for more sophisticated treatment.
Competition regulators, meanwhile, are scrutinizing whether the rising power of big corporations in the profession, many backed by private equity firms, is also resulting in higher prices.
It's why a bipartisan bill is being proposed in Congress to allow pet owners in the U.S. to use tax-advantaged health savings accounts to help pay for pet medical bills and insurance.
Under the proposed law, pet owners could use their HSA or FSA to pay up to $1,000 for veterinary care or pet insurance.
"A lot of people don't have that $1,000 laying around, and a lot of people use their credit card as an emergency fund and would use that to manage the cost of that emergency expense for that pet," Schulz said. "So, an extra $1,000 would go a long way to helping people because with the cost, life's really expensive in 2024."
About 1 in 5 Americans report having an HSA or FSA, according to a 2023 Global Market research report.
Many pet owners said they could see using their HSA for their pets because according to research by Statista, 82% of millennials in the U.S. see their pets as children.
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