Is American Pet Health Care (Also) Uniquely Inefficient?

That is the title of the new NBER paper by Liran Einav, Amy Finkelstein, and Atul Gupta, here is the abstract:

We document four similarities between American human healthcare and American pet care: (i) rapid growth in spending as a share of GDP over the last two decades; (ii) strong income-spending gradient; (iii) rapid growth in the employment of healthcare providers; and (iv) similar propensity for high spending at the end of life. We speculate about possible implications of these similar patterns in two sectors that share many common features but differ markedly in institutional features, such as the prevalence of insurance and of public sector involvement.

Note that the number of veterinarians doubled from 1996 to 2013.  The authors do not seem to have data on whether cats and dogs live longer in the United States, but I have a surmise…

Here are ungated copies of the paper.

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