In the U.S. healthcare system, aging makes for a disproportionate share of healthcare spending. Chronic disease is a crisis that represents the difficulty the U.S health system has in establishing preventative health to assuage the incidence of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, neurodegeneration. Roughly 85\u201390% of U.S. healthcare spending is tied to chronic and mental health conditions, and spending rises steeply with age (CDC, 2023; CMS, 2022). Older adults represent a minority of the population, yet account for a majority of healthcare utilization, hospital days, and pharmaceutical spending (CMS, 2022). This is but a piece of a broader set of talking points surrounding health systems transformation, in which we seek to improve healthcare quality, access, and affordability in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a student interested in healthcare, I am curious about how the private sector has a unique angle for pushing the pedestal of what can be done in health systems (See: well.co<\/a>, ParetoHealth<\/a>). For this blogpost, a parallel principle is being explored in a parallel case, that represents a non-intuitively large portion of U.S economic output: the sector of pets, specifically dogs.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The U.S. pet industry is projected to reach $157 billion in spending in 2025<\/strong>, continuing a decade-long upward trajectory (American Pet Products Association, 2025). Veterinary care and products alone represent a rapidly growing portion of that total, now exceeding $40 billion annually<\/strong> (APPA, 2025). Similar to human healthcare, the distribution<\/em> of that spending matters is heavily skewed toward a dog\u2019s senior years. Surveys summarized by the American Veterinary Medical Association show that cost is a leading reason owners delay or forgo recommended care<\/strong>, particularly for older pets (AVMA, 2022). A large Synchrony study found that while most dog owners expect total lifetime care to cost under $10,000, actual 15-year lifetime costs can reach $50,000\u2013$60,000<\/strong>, especially when chronic disease management is involved (Synchrony, 2022).<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the same structural problem we see in humans:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Problems like this have long prompted prominent thinkers to posit the economic and social value of slowing\/reversing biological aging itself. An analysis in Nature Aging<\/em> estimated that delaying aging enough to extend average life expectancy by just one year would be worth $38 trillion in economic value, largely by reducing late-life disease burden (Scott et al., 2021).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Veterinary medicine, it turns out, may be the first place where this idea becomes a regulated reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n