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By Rosemary Black for Daily News
Stem cell transplants, state-of-the-art image-guided radiation, sophisticated diagnostic procedures to pinpoint everything from cancer to lung disease. New and improved health care for the uninsured or underinsured? Nope. Medical treatment for the nation’s pets, some of whom have a better shot at being healed than people living in the same state.
Last year, Americans spent $12 billion to pay their vet bills, according to The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. That’s twice what pet owners spent just 10 years ago.
For many people, investing in an ailing pet’s life “improves the quality of a human life immeasurably more than, say, buying a luxury car,†Dr. Patty Khuly, a vet at Miami’s Sunset Animal Clinic, told the AP.
These days, vets are using increasingly sophisticated medical techniques on the 77 million dogs, 90 million cats, and all the other pets that live in the U.S. The treatments are neck in neck with what humans can expect if they fall ill. The reason for all the high-tech pet care? “The changing role of the pet in our society,†Khuly told the AP.
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