Maybe they do and I just don't know about it?........
They do.
Vets offer a huge amount of free and discounted service in situations like this. But most of an ordinary vet bill isn’t money that goes into the vet’s pocket. Much of it is for diagnostics, like bloodwork and urinalysis, that either gets sent to the same outside labs that do human testing, or for certain tests that many vets can do in-house, require non-reusable supplies and the services of already very low-paid technicians. For a critically ill animal, there is also the cost of 24/7 monitoring by vet techs, who, like lab technicians, are already very low-paid. And for a small vet hospital with limited critical care facilities, caring for a non-paying animal may mean having to refer an deep-pocketed owner to somewhere else, with an animal needing similar care.
Unfortunately, there’s a virtually infinite supply of innocent, helpless animals who have been abused or neglected and ended up in need of expensive veterinary care, and vets would quickly go bankrupt if they didn’t learn to put strict limits on how many of these animals they will care for at a financial loss. And of course, vets also give a lot of discounted or free care to long time paying customers who are no longer able to pay for even basic care for a beloved pet. I remember a very awkward scene in one of my vet’s offices a few years back, where an elderly woman who had clearly been disabled by a stroke, was presented with a bill for her kitty, who had developed some chronic illness, and needed several vet visits recently. The woman, with only half her face moving but tears welling up in both eyes, was explaining her monthly income vs. the several recent vet bills, and saying she just couldn’t continue doing this and was afraid she would just have to have the cat put to sleep next time. The cat looked perfectly fine, so wasn’t in a condition where it might have been kinder to let it go — it just needed regular, simple treatment that the woman couldn’t afford. Knowing this vet, I’m sure he starting giving her deep discounts that didn’t really even cover his out-of-pocket costs. But there must have been at least a couple of hundred similarly situated elderly people within a 10 mile radius of this vet.