The Pet Store Consideration

The moment that made LifeLine Medications inevitable.

The Story

There was a time — I won’t say when, because it doesn’t matter when — when my child was sick.

Not dying-sick. Not emergency-room-sick. Just sick enough to need a doctor. Sick enough that a responsible parent takes them in, gets antibiotics or whatever’s needed, and goes home relieved.

Except I couldn’t afford the doctor.

I sat in my car in a parking lot, doing math. The visit. The prescription. The follow-up if it got worse. I didn’t have it. I didn’t have any of it.

And I found myself looking at the pet store across the street.

Veterinary care. Cash pricing. No insurance dance. Just: here’s the problem, here’s the solution, here’s the cost.

I considered it.

I actually considered taking my child to a veterinarian because I couldn’t afford to take them to a doctor.

What Happened

I didn’t do it. I found another way. The details don’t matter.

What matters is that I sat in that parking lot long enough to consider it. That the American healthcare system had put a father in a position where “veterinarian for my child” was a calculation worth making.

That moment doesn’t leave you.

Why This Matters

When people ask why I’m building LifeLine Medications — why I care about community health coordination, transparent pricing, graduated payment systems — I think about that parking lot.

Not because I’m special. Because I’m not.

There are parents in parking lots right now doing the same math. And some of them don’t have the “other way” I found. Some of them make the other choice. Some of them make no choice at all and watch it get worse.

That’s not good enough.

The System Is Broken — And They Know It

Yesterday (February 12, 2026), The New York Times reported that the Senate Health Committee is investigating a private company making millions off a federal drug program meant to help the poor. The 340B Drug Price Program — created in 1992 to provide savings to safety-net hospitals so they could expand care for needy patients — has exploded to encompass more than half of nonprofit hospitals in the United States.

The sole administrator, Apexus, enjoys profit margins above 80 percent. Senator Bill Cassidy cited a 3,291 percent increase from 2005 to 2024, with $81.4 billion spent in 2024 alone. Meanwhile, patients “rarely know they are part of this system” and “can be left with big bills.”

Johns Hopkins professor Ge Bai called it a “government-protected monopoly” requiring examination for its “unintended consequences.”

This is why I sat in that parking lot. This is what “working as designed” looks like.

The Connection

This letter connects to:

The Standard

When you’ve sat in that parking lot, you don’t forget.

You either let it break you, or you build something so no one else has to sit there.

I chose to build.

“No parent should have to choose between the doctor and the veterinarian.”

For the Keep.