As a a vet I think this author's limited experience is a bit out of date.
In the veterinary industry, medical management is always influenced by costs. Just yesterday I had to deal with a blocked cat. Gold standard treatment costs thousands of dollars and the owner only had $200. You not only have to take into account the hospital costs, but how the owner can manage their pet at home for ongoing care too. Costs are one of the main stressors in the industry (there's plenty of Ted Talks on the high suicide rate), and commonly owners shift their responsibility by blaming vets as "money grabbers" or who are only "in it for the money".
Thankfully insurance is quite common now (depending on the area) and with less financial restraint on costs we are able to do more advanced treatments. We have specialists referral daily and even recently had a brain surgery on a dog. This would have been very rare in the past and the limited opportunity to perform complex treatments like this hinders how much data we can collect and learn from this.
You do have old-school vets or those in rural clinics who would be happy to do every treatment under the sun. But being a 'jack-of-all-trades' is unrealistic when each sub-field is rapidly expanding in knowledge, and most younger vets (especially in big cities) are more than happy to refer to specialists (and avoid risk of complaints), unless of course the owner cannot afford to do so.
In the veterinary industry, medical management is always influenced by costs. Just yesterday I had to deal with a blocked cat. Gold standard treatment costs thousands of dollars and the owner only had $200. You not only have to take into account the hospital costs, but how the owner can manage their pet at home for ongoing care too. Costs are one of the main stressors in the industry (there's plenty of Ted Talks on the high suicide rate), and commonly owners shift their responsibility by blaming vets as "money grabbers" or who are only "in it for the money".
Thankfully insurance is quite common now (depending on the area) and with less financial restraint on costs we are able to do more advanced treatments. We have specialists referral daily and even recently had a brain surgery on a dog. This would have been very rare in the past and the limited opportunity to perform complex treatments like this hinders how much data we can collect and learn from this.
You do have old-school vets or those in rural clinics who would be happy to do every treatment under the sun. But being a 'jack-of-all-trades' is unrealistic when each sub-field is rapidly expanding in knowledge, and most younger vets (especially in big cities) are more than happy to refer to specialists (and avoid risk of complaints), unless of course the owner cannot afford to do so.