<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>flatline</author><text>The cost of preserving life, human or otherwise, has skyrocketed. When I was a kid, it cost $25 for a vet visit and something like $100 for a minor surgical procedure. Adjusted for inflation those are probably about the same today, the difference being there were no &lt;i&gt;major&lt;/i&gt; surgical procedures available for pets. Also, the vet did not carry $150k in student loan debt.&lt;p&gt;A decade ago I had a kitten with heart arrhythmia. The vet suggested we go to a cat cardiologist. To me that seemed insane, it was going to be $1000 just to get inspected. The cat is alive and well today  with no cardiologist visit.&lt;p&gt;What is the value of the kitten’s life when it was a rescue and there are thousands more to pick from if it passed?The reality is that creating life is cheap and plentiful on planet earth. The resources to preserve life are not. If you are privileged you can afford to pay for your pet’s care. That is a sentimental choice for most people, not a practical one. The equation is different for human life, but only by degree. Insurance is only going to do so much, there is a real cost to medical treatment.</text><parent_chain><item><author>GlenTheMachine</author><text>My wife is a vet.&lt;p&gt;One big issue is that most people don’t have pet insurance. But they do have medical insurance. As a consequence they are completely surprised by the out-of-pocket costs of medical procedures.&lt;p&gt;Hip surgery (to pick something at random) is hip surgery, even if it’s for a dog. It still costs thousands of dollars. But a significant portion of the population expects to pay what they would pay for insurance-covered human surgery, eg a couple hundred dollars at most. And when they see the bill they accuse the vet of “only being in it for the money” if they won’t significantly discount the price.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, the vet is paying back $150,000 in student loans, same as a human doctor, but only making a third of the pay.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>A suicide crisis among veterinarians</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20231010-the-acute-suicide-crisis-among-veterinarians-youre-always-going-to-be-failing-somebody</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>unshavedyak</author><text>Also, not sure how common it is, but an extended friend of mine was a vet tech. She quit due to the emotional toll of seeing animal abuse. Specifically sexual abuse. Apparently they had very limited tools to actually deal with the problem and instead had to give the dogs back to the abusers. That was not an emotional burden that she could continue with.&lt;p&gt;Not something I would have thought vets would have to deal with.</text><parent_chain><item><author>GlenTheMachine</author><text>My wife is a vet.&lt;p&gt;One big issue is that most people don’t have pet insurance. But they do have medical insurance. As a consequence they are completely surprised by the out-of-pocket costs of medical procedures.&lt;p&gt;Hip surgery (to pick something at random) is hip surgery, even if it’s for a dog. It still costs thousands of dollars. But a significant portion of the population expects to pay what they would pay for insurance-covered human surgery, eg a couple hundred dollars at most. And when they see the bill they accuse the vet of “only being in it for the money” if they won’t significantly discount the price.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, the vet is paying back $150,000 in student loans, same as a human doctor, but only making a third of the pay.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>A suicide crisis among veterinarians</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20231010-the-acute-suicide-crisis-among-veterinarians-youre-always-going-to-be-failing-somebody</url></story>