Prop 129 seems to have some good intent as far as increasing access to veterinary care and potentially lowering costs, but it seems like:
- The people who would be most informed are pretty consistently against it
- It seems a bit concerning to me after I did some research
For #1, even one of the advocacy groups presents statistics showing that fewer than half of vet techs in their survey agree:
. And basically every professional association is strongly against it, for example:
For #2, among other concerns I see, one of the two colleges with programs is LMU, whose program is 100% online yet VPAs will be allowed to perform surgery. I don’t feel like someone should perform surgery on my pets without having some in person experience.
While I have no doubt that plenty of the advocacy for this prop is well-intentioned, I don’t think it’s likely to have the effects it sounds like it should.
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Devil’s advocate here- members of those groups aren’t neutral and would stand to lose money if this passes.
That’s definitely the tension I see, but then I’d have expected vet techs to be strongly in favor of it since it’d be a career opportunity for them.
I guess one thing I’ll add is that people with those degrees who work for USDA (i.e. not retail veterinary care for pets) are strongly against 129, which also makes me think it’s not simply an economic motive.