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💼 Employers Offering "Pawternity" Leave

Yeah...I'd work in that office.

May 25, 2023

In Today’s Email:

  • Pet PTO? Finally.

  • Pet Med Price Fixing?! Get ready to be angry. Really angry.

  • Meet the good boy that got Alex Murdaugh convicted of double murder.

  • “The Squeeze” aka The Internet’s Best Dog News in 60 seconds.

  • The Last Laugh: What we’re laughing with. Not at.

Say Hello to Employee Pet Benefits

If you can’t bring your dog to work, it might be time to quit.

In a post-pandemic world, everybody has a pet, and nobody wants to go into an office (if they don’t have to). So how are employers keeping morale and office attendance high? By finally loosening their pet policies and giving employees the benefits that would have a measurable impact on growth and retention.

Employee Pet Benefits is a rapidly emerging field that is already gaining some serious traction. This past May, a 12-hour conference called Best Pet Workplaces was held in Los Angeles, with attendance from the executives from companies like Google, REI, Starbucks, Sweetgreen, Walmart, and Whole Foods.

What was the topic of discussion?

How employees should be afforded more benefits as they relate to their beloved pets. 

Benefits that were discussed included:

  • Pawternity leave - Time off when you get a dog, also known as Gotcha Days.

  • Pet bereavement days - Time off when your beloved dog crosses the Rainbow bridge.

  • Dog boarding in the office

  • Discounted pet insurance

  • Pets in the office

The event, kind of like a Ted Talk for Pets, with Fortune 500 companies taking the stage to tout their recently instituted pet benefits, and how those policies have benefitted the workplace. Here are some examples of companies leading the charge:

Amazon: Dog-friendly office, on-campus dog park, discounted pet health insurance.

Athenahealth: Dog-friendly office, provides employees with pet health insurance, time off to care for pets, and a pet-care stipend.

Whole Foods: Dog-friendly office & they have something called Furry Fridays. Cute. I’d work there.

Google: Dog-friendly office

Ben & Jerry’s: Pet-friendly office, provide pet health insurance and a monthly pet-care stipend.

According to Bloomberg, “In a 2021 survey conducted by Nationwide, the largest provider of pet insurance, 72% of workers at pet-friendly companies said they wouldn’t switch jobs for the same salary; only 44% of people at non-pet-friendly companies said the same.

Nationwide’s fastest-growing sector is pet insurance, which has been climbing 20% a year—twice the growth rate of the overall pet industry. Most of it is sold at a discount through people’s employers.”

According to Newsweek, while 53 percent of Gen Zers and 52 of Millennials said an employer should offer bereavement leave when a pet dies, only 33% of Boomers agreed with a pet bereaveament policy.

So in conclusion, if you run HR for a company with no pet policy, it might be time to change things, unless you’d rather see your employees start doing stuff like this:

 (WARNING: NSFW language)

Overheard at In-N-Out:

“The 5-second rule doesn’t apply when you have a 2-second dog.”

- Lizzy, Los Angeles, CA

The Dogfight Over Pet Medication

Big Pharma has their greedy paws on our pet’s medication, and are jacking up the prices.

Whether you’re a human or an animal, alternatives to brand-name medications are important. It provides optionality and most importantly, cheaper prices. It gives consumers the ability to buy the medication they need — which is crazy that access to necessary medication is cost prohibitive. I guess that’s why Mark Cuban started CostPlusDrugs.com.

If you’ve struggled to find cheaper (i.e. generic) alternatives to expensive flea and tick medication, like Advantage II and K9 Advantix II topical flea-and-tick treatments, there’s a reason.

According to a USA Today investigative article, your inability to find generic pet medication “is not by accident, according to a federal lawsuit by one of the generic’s makers, but a scheme by the brand-name products’ company to block competition.”

Tevra Brands, a company that creates these lower-cost generic medications (currently available online) recently filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Northern California, offering a rare glimpse into the multibillion-dollar pet medication market, and how a few major companies have a monopolistic control on pricing.

“Tevra’s suit claims it lost tens of millions of dollars because Bayer Animal Health (BAH), a former subsidiary of the German pharmaceutical giant, conspired to maintain its monopoly over the treatment it created.” 

Tevra’s flea and tick treatment retails for $30 on Amazon.com, while the brand-name equivalent, Advantage II for cats, costs $64 on Chewy.com.

According to Tevra’s lawsuit BAH, Tevra alleges that BAH’s exclusivity deals with large retailers violate The Sherman Act, which prohibits actual or attempted monopolization, as well as any contracts and conspiracies that result in the unreasonable restraint of trade, and The Clayton Act which bans discriminatory prices or services between merchants, as well as mergers and acquisitions that restrict competition.

This could be a landmark case in the sector of pet health.

While the hooman pharmaceutical industry has many cheap alternatives (once brand-name patent protection expires), only 14% of federally-approved animal drugs have a generic version, according to the Generic Animal Drug Alliance.

But there’s a reason for this…

Pet health insurance policies are nowhere near as robust as human health insurance, which requires generic alternatives be made available to consumers whenever possible. Since pet health insurance is still relatively new, larger drug companies can control the market with exclusivity agreements on patented medications.

Those exclusivity agreements block pet stores, online pharmacies and wholesale distributors that supply retailers and veterinarians from selling products that directly compete with their brand-name goods. These big pharma brands can also incentivize vendors with financial discounts and rebates that they otherwise can’t afford to turn down.

And unfortunately, these exclusivity deals are everywhere. Novartis, which is a major drug company, cited exclusivity deals as the roadblock for one of its generic pet medications, according to USA Today.

Tevra v. Bayer Animal Health is currently in the discovery phase and could go to trial as early as Summer 2024.

So what does this all mean?

This means that any big pharmaceutical company with their paws on your pets medication is going to keep doing what Big Pharma does — use their resources to try and be the only dog in the race, much to the detriment of their customers.

What can I do about it?

Find a vet you trust.

But if you’re a natural skeptic, you don’t have to get your medication through your vet. You can always request a written prescription to buy any medications you need elsewhere if you find cheaper alternatives.

You can also ask your vet about generic alternatives for the medication they recommend. If they don’t have recommendations, you should do your research.

Knowledge is power, because (unsurprisingly) pharmaceutical companies don’t give a sh*t about your pet. They care about $.

The Goodest Boy Alert!

Meet Bubba, the family dog that helped convict Alex Murdaugh of double murder

“The Squeeze”: Dog News In 60 Seconds

Today’s Last Laugh:

Ruh roh…