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FTC acts against private equity firm’s acquisition of veterinary clinics
- lordleft 4y agoInteresting. I'd like to see more action against the financialization of many other industries / domains, like healthcare and even housing, that I feel are not well served by a purely-market driven perspective. One wonders what the Private Equity firm's intention was here.
- baggy_trough 4y ago
- markovbot 4y agoah yes, a more profit driven healthcare sector, exactly what this country needs
- whimsicalism 4y agoShielding people from the actual prices does raise the actual prices typically.
- Retric 4y agoYet somehow market driven healthcare is almost universally more expensive, it’s like there are some monopolistic effects involved. For example several attempts to privatize the VA failed because of the vast increase in costs.
- SoftTalker 4y agoYes, when one mega-organization owns most or all of the health care providers in an area (which is very often the case) it's a monopoly and there is no market competition. Where I live for example, from a cost perspective I can't really shop around because there are no individual practices anymore. They (and the clincs and the hospitals) are all owned by the same vast medical congolmerate. It's completely anticompetitive, yet the FTC has not shown any concern AFAIK.
- dado3212 4y agoThe two driving forces for higher costs are subsidization of demand (gov't assistance + insurance, all of which have some pass-through effect on raising the cost of services), and artificial restriction of supply (it's hard to create a hospital/vet service/hire non-US doctors). Most market-driven healthcare approaches have been handicapped by one (or usually both) of those factors still being in play.
- linuxftw 4y agoI have experience with the VA system. It's an absolute sham. Privatizing it would absolutely increase costs, because then people would actually been seen, let alone treated, for their conditions.
- arrosenberg 4y agoOP isn't exactly wrong. Much of the regulation in housing and healthcare serves to benefit and entrench the incumbents into a non-market situation where the distributors control pricing power.
- Xeoncross 4y agoHealthcare was more affordable back when individuals payed for it. The problem was that some could not, so we introduced insurance. At this point no one can afford it anymore without insurance. So our fix for one problem created a new problem.
- markovbot 4y agoif only there was some kind of other option used by all developed countries except the US... too bad there isn't, i guess i'll just die when i cant afford healthcare
- Xeoncross 4y agoWhat is the other option? Either insurance by private or government bodies or cash is all I've ever seen. Government and private insurance raises prices. Cash excludes poor people.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- larkost 4y agoThe other option is to have the government have a larger control, either by government run insurance, or by government run healthcare. There are numerous examples of either in the world that are both more effective by healthcare metrics and lower price than the current U.S. system. To be brutal about this: we in the U.S. demonstrably pay more per person that the rest of the "developed" world, and we get worse outcomes for it, and that is not even counting that we exclude a good portion of our population (which other countries do not). The only place the U.S. excels is at the very top of healthcare, the part that 1% of our population will ever see. We pay the top doctors the top dollar, so they come here, where they charge uber-top-dollar. At one point a lot of this was going to fund new drugs and clinical methods, which quickly filtered down to help everyone. But at this point those filter-downs are few and far between, and it is simply going to those who have the most money, or are the most visible.
- xtian 4y agoBased on what?
- alistairSH 4y agowould You're 100% confident in that assessment? I'm not going to claim less regulation could help control prices. The typical certificate of need process seems like something that could go away without much problem (I find it unlikely anybody would invest in a new hospital or whatever other facility without being relatively confident there's a market). But, regulation on drugs and devices probably should remain.
- mywittyname 4y agoThe flaw in this idea is that there's no good way to introduce more competition to the market. The market is only going to continue to optimize for profit. The reason pricing isn't available is because that's negotiated between the provider and the insurance companies. Since most patients are using insurance, hospitals have to negotiate with some of the major insurance providers. Insurance companies do not want hospitals have transparent pricing, since they want people to buy insurance. Insurance companies also want uninsured people to pay a higher price, again, so people buy insurance. People can't choose their insurance providers because it's tied to their employment (in most cases). The market settled on this extremely convoluted system, which makes no sense to outsiders, specifically because it's so profitable. The only way out of it is through regulations that prohibit certain anti-competitive behavior, or for the establishment of competition in the insurance segment, which has no profit motive (and who would start a business with no profit motive?) Most parties kind of like the status quo. Insurance companies collect from employers, rather than individuals, so most people don't see the true cost of insurance. Hospitals get to charge insane amounts for certain procedures, since patients won't pay the entire bill, the insurance company will. And (upper-middle-class) patients are mostly happy, because healthcare feels cheap to them (since, again they never see the true cost they paid).
- tyrfing 4y ago> The market settled on this extremely convoluted system, which makes no sense to outsiders, specifically because it's so profitable Which exact parties are extracting excess profits?
- jessaustin 4y agoIt's mostly health insurance firms. That's a much bigger sector in USA than it is anywhere else on earth.
- tyrfing 4y agoLow single-digit operating margins aren't typically described as "so profitable" in any other context.
- munk-a 4y agoNever forget that every time an anti-regulation politician gets money under the table for helping to pass terrible market entrenching regulation they win twice: once when they bring home the cash and again when they have yet another example of poor regulation to drive home their ideology. Making broken regulations to entrench large market players is the most patriotic of pastimes in America.
- bombcar 4y agoThere's a number of these where there's a desire to make it appear there is competition, but actually all are owned by the same conglomerate. I would be 0% surprised if similar things haven't been done or tried in optometry, dentists, etc.
- bobthepanda 4y agoStarbucks owns a bunch of “independent” shops
- riahi 4y agoSee luxottica and their “brands”.
- mywittyname 4y agoThey even own the insurance company, EyeMed...
- bombcar 4y agoI honestly think at some point this gets to the place of "operating under false pretences" to have so many brands that are actually the same company behind it. Perhaps "brought to you by HOLDING_COMPANY_X" should be required.
- 3maj 4y agoFor the last 5-10 years one of the most popular strategies for mid-sized PE firms has been the dental clinic roll up.
- monkeybutton 4y agoFunny you should say that: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-private-equity-buy-out-pharmacy-dental-office-veterinary-clinic/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-private-equ...
- samstave 4y ago
- subsubzero 4y agoagree, it seems like almost every industry really has like maybe 3 at the most players and they are all gigantic and it is extremely non-competitive.
- sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago> One wonders what the Private Equity firm's intention was here. Gee, quite the conundrum.
- markovbot 4y ago> One wonders what the Private Equity firm's intention was here. no, i don't think anyone's wondering that. private equity firms have one purpose and one purpose only.
- munk-a 4y agoI guess it might be fairer to then say "I wonder why nobody says out loud that such an acquisition will definitely lead to a decline in service for consumers".
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y agoAll the people with the platform to say that are on the take.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kilna 4y ago"decline in service for consumers" -> squeezing the maximum quantity of blood nickels from suffering animals and their owners.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- arrosenberg 4y agoThey can’t hear over Robert Bork’s echo.
- newsclues 4y agoGenerally people with knowledge of shady stuff have a financial incentive not to speak out.
- MrZongle2 4y agoAnd that is, of course, to put kittens to sleep. (I joke, your point is well taken)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- samstave 4y agoHedge funds should be 10000000% excluded/precluded and effectively illegal from owning anything but stock in a company/industry at a level whereby they cannot set profit and pricing for ANYTHING. (either invest in the company or industry, but what they do is effectively price-fixing after they get control) Full Stop. --- If you want to buy stock in a thing, a hedge fund should NEVER be able to have a complete controlling share. Why? Because history shows us exactly what happens. Funds, foundations, "private equity" are all money laundering corruption schemes at the cost of others. THe problem is that this modality has replaced the definition of capitalism. There are hedge funds that own over 100,000 houses, hedge funds that buy up every trailer home park they can, hedge funds that, in concert with the realty market, are the reason for high real estate prices. Its a cancer. Insulin Martin. is a great example of the mindset of these folks.
- legitster 4y agoA bit of apples and oranges here. The goal of the FTC is not to make big companies smaller, it's to protect the market. They are not supposed to be the ones to determine if whales are natural or not to an ecosystem - so they don't generally go hunting them.
- jessaustin 4y agoThat's so 1980s. Your appeal to nature has nothing to do with the reality of the last several decades. Mergers among firms in the same market are never good for humans who must use those markets in order to live.
- legitster 4y ago> Mergers among firms in the same market are never good for humans who must use those markets in order to live. I don't think this is a universal truth. Clearly there are situations where consumers prefer national brands or dealing with larger companies. If we don't like it, we can pass laws to impose our morality on the public, but the FTC has their mandate and they are sticking with it until told otherwise.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jacobolus 4y ago> That's so 1980s. Yep, we’ve had about 50 years now of a Supreme Court shifting further and further to the right, slowly eroding every government check on corporate malfeasance and rent extraction, including antitrust law. The result has been a slow-motion train wreck, and it’s not clear that anything can be done about it for at least a generation.
- astrange 4y agoDealing with large companies is often better than small businesses or family businesses, which in many industries are incompetent or run by tyrants. Landlords being the classic example.
- akira2501 4y agoThere's nothing "market-driven" about the way the Federal Reserve currently works. The Government takes your money and then makes a market you can't participate in, serving entities that seem to primarily thrive off of rent seeking behavior. The entire "Too Big To Fail" period should have made this clear. We are clearly in a government regime that would prefer to control the markets through the discount window than let them be truly driven by their own forces.
- dionidium 4y ago> even housing, that I feel are not well served by a purely-market driven perspective I hate to be the YIMBY broken record, but we don't have anything like a purely market-driven approach to housing. An important aspect of a functioning market is that supply is allowed to increase in order to meet demand. This isn't the case in the United States because of zoning laws. The housing market is more like the market for rare coins or something than it is any kind of actual market.
- nominusllc 4y agoI don't understand how some ( to me ) obvious anticompetitive corps seem to go unnoticed, but in this case veterinary clinics are receiving scrutiny.
- missedthecue 4y agoProbably because many of the things you consider monopolies aren't actually monopolies. Google is one such example on this board that is often accused of being a monopoly but in real terms is not.
- whimsicalism 4y agoMonopoly on search ads.
- seeingfurther 4y agoI am right there with you. Alden Global Capital comes to mind.
- salawat 4y agoRegulatory DDoS. Hint: if you see it, write your Congresspeople, and tell them you'd like the matter referred to DoJ/the proper regulator. Then, if you really want to make sure, submit something to the same regulator. If the red flag never gets waved, nobody even bothers/knows to look, and with the way the justice system works, there is no crime until a DA has sufficient info to start building a case there is one. Do this for both State, and Federal at a minimum. Local if such authorites exist and are not preempted.
- AlotOfReading 4y agoMy partner works in this industry and in fact has friends that are affected by this merger. While the FTC can and does have the ability to do many things simultaneously, the current situation in the vet industry is dire. Corporate vets are more profitable (through price-gouging), have a virtual stranglehold on increasingly limited labor pools, and are pretty much the only ones that can afford to invest in specialty medicine like emergency clinics these days. The FTC has been taking a firmer watch over the consolidation in recent years, but the trend is very clearly towards the extinction of locally run, family-owned practices that serve the community.
- jey 4y agoInteresting. Doesn't Mars own a ton of specialty vet clinics too? (E.g. the VCA chain)
- techsupporter 4y agoAnd, of course, Banfield.
- blamarvt 4y agoYes, they do. I don't think it's the number of vet clinics that's the issue here though but rather the locations.
- Maximus9000 4y agoYes! Mars is buying medical practices in Canada too!
- legitster 4y agoNot many of their locations are speciality.
- zucked 4y agoLike... Mars candy? looks Yep, that Mars. What timeline am I stuck in?! I want off this train :(
- barbecue_sauce 4y agoI mean, they own Banfield and have been in the pet food business since the 30s, so...
- snapetom 4y agoMars was also forced to sell some emergency and speciality clinics about 3 years ago, too. Today's action isn't entirely unprecedented by the FTC.
- jmyeet 4y agoThe term "end stage capitalism" (or the more palatable "late capitalism") I've heard a lot recently and things like this really make me wonder. The voracious and insatiable appetite for profit has led to some really disgusting practices for example: - Goldman Sachs driving up food prices, which quite literally kills people, for profit [1] - Hedge funds buying up trailer parks and jacking up the rates [2] - Medical price gouging (eg epipens, insulin) [3]; - Abbott shutting down a baby formula plant that was poisoning infants to essentially end-run a possible investigation [4] where ultimately the government begged (paid?) them to reopen it; and - Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a massive boon to the US military-industrial complex, a sector that might otherwise have found hard times thanks to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ending. If you look at these you see regulatory failure at pretty much every level thanks to the revolving door and resulting regulatory capture by these industries. Compare this to China, who executed two people found responsible for a tainted milk scandal [5]. It's hard not to see just how much rent-seeking and monopoly-creating goes on in the modern economy. When is it enough? [1]: https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/04/27/how-goldman-sachs-created-the-food-crisis/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/04/27/how-goldman-sachs-creat... [2]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/15/what-happens-when-investment-firms-acquire-trailer-parks https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/15/what-happens-w... [3]: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/12/31/792617538/a-decade-marked-by-outrage-over-drug-prices https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/12/31/7926175... [4]: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/what-happened-with-abbott-baby-formula-that-worsened-us-shortage-2022-05-16/ https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/... [5]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/24/china-executes-milk-scandal-pair https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/24/china-executes...
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> term "end stage capitalism" (or the more palatable "late capitalism") The problem with this language is it implies inevitability and a near-term conclusion. Neither is a given. You've correctly identified regulatory failure (specifically, our inattention to competition) at the root of these problems. Fighting that takes effort. When I hear the terms late-stage or end-stage capitalism, I hear nouveau nihilism. The situation is far from unfixable. And the present state can persist and fester for generations more. An analogy might be found in a deteriorating factory. Management complains the factory is in its final stages. The foreman, meanwhile, sits bewildered next to a list of neglected maintenance. This wasn’t inevitable. It still isn’t inevitable. We’re just choosing not to fix it.
- mberning 4y agoIt took 12 hours for my dog to be seen at the emergency vet I went to recently. It was brutal. And that was the only one that would agree to have us come in. It was over an hour a way. All the local clinics said don’t come in unless it was a last minute euthanization or the animal was unresponsive. Crazy.
- donatj 4y agoI'm not sure if it's just the proliferation of COVID puppies or what, but in the last two years it has become remarkably more difficult to get a vet appointment. I accidentally stepped on my dogs paw about a year ago and getting an appointment less than a month out took DAYS of calling around. Ended up going to a vet 40 miles away.
- snapetom 4y agoMy wife's practice has gotten insanely busy post-COVID. She doesn't deal with dogs and cat's so it's not that boom. Decreasing slots due to safety and health was an issue at first, but they've since returned to normal towards the last half of 2020. Staffing shortages, sure, but the slots are still the same as before. The only thing she can think of is with more WFH, more people are noticing things wrong with their pets.
- heartbreak 4y agoI don’t think this has anything to do with PE acquisitions of emergency veterinary clinics. It’s just typical post-Covid staff shortages due to retirements and such. Because of the working hours, emergency gets the brunt of the shortage before the normal 8-5 shifts. I’m familiar with a few clinics that have been hiring DVMs at $120k in low CoL areas for 6+ months without success. It’s hard to raise prices enough to pay more than that in those areas.
- Animats 4y agoFinally, the FTC is doing its job.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bigdict 4y agoHa, Lina Khan in her interview on June 9: > You can miss the bigger picture,” Khan said in an interview with the Financial Times. “Every individual transaction might not raise problems, but in the aggregate you’ve got a huge private equity firm controlling, say, veterinary clinics. So that’s a concern.” https://www.ft.com/content/ef9e4ce8-ab9a-45b3-ad91-7877f0e1c797 https://www.ft.com/content/ef9e4ce8-ab9a-45b3-ad91-7877f0e1c...
- Maximus9000 4y agoI hope Canada is watching. Private Equity firms are doing the same thing here: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-private-equity-buy-out-pharmacy-dental-office-veterinary-clinic/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-private-equ...
- PragmaticPulp 4y agoVet clinics became very popular private equity targets recently. One of the people I know in PE described their profit margins as being surprisingly high even before PE roll-ups. They said that some PE firms were on a mission to acquire all of the vet firms in metro areas and then drive prices up even further because the demand is so inelastic. There was a secondary rush where people were trying to acquire vet clinics in anticipation of flipping them to PE roll-ups later. My local vet seems to have gone down this slide. A long time ago it felt like a staff that really just cared about animals and had good prices. On my last visit it felt like I was bombarded with practiced pitches for different products and services at every step of the process. They even added some expensive vitamin product to my bill despite me declining it during the service. They removed it when I caught it on the bill before walking out the door, but only after a last attempt at pitching me on it. I could tell they were heavily incentivized to sell as much as possible. I didn't go back, but at this point I don't know where else to go.
- amelius 4y agoDentists will go down the same route.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoDentists seem to generally be decent businesspeople, while doctors and vets aren't, so they may resist PE buyouts for a while.
- pc86 4y agoI'm curious why this is as it seems to have been the case in my experience as well.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoMy guess is that nobody becomes a dentist because they love teeth. They do it to have a stable business. Conversely, people become vets because they love animals, and people often become doctors for the prestige or the ability to help people.
- legitster 4y agoIt's clear that no one in the comments section has actually read the article. There are specifically 6 clinics that JAB has to sell to a third-party after the acquisition - all of them are either emergency or specialists of which the market is uniquely bare of options. The FTC has no problem with clinics rolling up into a chain.
- blobbers 4y ago
- blobbers 4y agofwiw, I love the FTC and vets, but this does not seem like the top news of today in hackernews world.
- pwinnski 4y agoThey're probably being flagged by people tired of seeing the same thing over and over and over and over again, with much heat and little to no light.
- blobbers 4y agoShouldn't there be free discussion on it though? What do you mean by much heat and little to no light?
- throwaway2048 4y agoHN is not a free speech platform, nobody, not the users or the moderators, is obligated to give stories exposure.
- blobbers 4y agoThat's true, but it seems odd that they're going out of their way to suppress a story.
- singhrac 4y agoThis has been a systematic issue that I'm glad the FTC is taking a closer look at. Does anyone know if veterinary medicine spots are controlled a la the AMA's control on residency spots?
- SteveGerencser 4y agoPE firms have a horrible track record at doing anything other than maximizing revenue and profit without regard to any other issue. A quick look at what they have done to the motorized wheelchair industry makes that very clear. Wait times for service in DRM enabled wheelchairs can be 4 weeks or more. The thought of your only means of mobility being taken from you for a month because profit comes before service is terrifying. Where I live we are already limited in our vet options and this will make it worse as they continue to gobble up small clinics.
- IG_Semmelweiss 4y agoThe only answer to this issue (and make no mistake, its happening in medical care for humans too) is to not restrict conpetition. With yields so low, and the stock market still above 2019 highs, PE firms are diving into the few areas of the economy where there is value due to lack of competition and it is also not completely overheated. However, take out the permit and licensing requirements and you would plummet PE money pouring in right away.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago> However, take out the permit and licensing requirements Remove permitting, licensing, and educational requirements from people selling surgical procedures for animals? No thanks. I don't actually see occupational licensing as a bottleneck for a job that requires significant education and training to do properly anyway We don't have a backlog of veterinarians out there who completed all of their years of training but then got stuck getting licensing. We also don't really want amateurs vets opening up clinics and just winging it with people's pets.
- AlotOfReading 4y agoCurrently about 3,200 vets graduate each year. About 4,400 veterinary positions open up annually according to the BLS [1]. [1] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/veterinarians.htm#tab-6 https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/veterinarians.htm#tab-6
- idrios 4y ago> We also don't really want amateurs vets opening up clinics and just winging it with people's pets. In a couple decades, people will be saying this about to fresh veterinary school graduates who want to open their own hospital instead of joining one of the conglomerate private equity firms. We don't have a backlog of trained unlicensed veterinarians because it's the training that's the bottleneck. You could be the most ambitious person in the world but if you don't get into vet school then that door is closed. You can't get a license if you don't go to an accredited institution. I wouldn't get rid of the license requirement, but I would definitely change it to something that is not rate-limited by the number of available vet school seats per year. Imagine if drivers licenses were handed out the same way, if each DMV only offered the mandatory prerequisite training to 500 people per year and nobody else was allowed to drive. Driving would become an elite institution too, and we'd be complaining that it's better that way because nobody trusts amateur drivers operating these several-thousand lb machines.
- andjd 4y agoI'm bothered by these half-measure enforcement actions. At the end of the day, the company is allowed to buy up 16 clinics but must divest of 6. At these numbers, it seems like if there is a threat of monopolistic market failure from the merger, then even with this countermeasure there is still a threat. Leading into this is the obvious observation that a company forced to divest some of it's assets to comply with an order like this is incentivized to shed it's lowest-performing assets, and is also incentivized to sell them to an incompetent operator. This makes it likely that the divested assets won't end up being an effective competator. Consider with the T-mobile/Sprint merger. One of the brands spun off as part of that deal has already ceased operations, and the other has negligible market share. The oversight regulations are also odd. They are a tacit admonition that the resulting company has too much market power. If they have too much market power today, why would these restrictions sunset in 10 years? Sure, they may not have unreasonable market power that far in the future, but shouldn't the company have to petition to be let off of this oversight, e.g. to prove that they no longer are a dominant player with excessive market power? It seems like the correct answer for the FTC when they address mergers like this it to just say no.
- renewiltord 4y agoI actually really enjoy the rush of private equity into things like housing and veterinary clinics. The thing with these industries is that it was distributed protectionism. Some people were either running a licensing protectionism operation or a political protectionism operation. Now, private financial firms are exploiting that gap which is making it visible. There's no difference between the guy who's all like "Why should I let my property values drop?" and the firm who bought the home next to him with the same mindset. The outcome is the same.
- gigatexal 4y agoAs a dog owner that is price sensitive to vet fees I don’t like PE coming into space
- slt2021 4y agoZero rate interest - almost free money given to large institutions - creates possibility for all PE firms to buy up entire industries and jack up prices.
- rmk 4y agoHow about doing something to deter PE firms snapping up rental and housing properties? Is the FTC doing anything about it? Housing affordability (or lack thereof) is the issue plaguing the millennial cohort and even incremental progress on this front can make a big difference to a lot of people.
- fallingfrog 4y agoUgh, we need to outlaw private equity firms right now. They're a remora sucking on the economy.
- the_d3f4ult 4y agoI'm an ophthalmologist. This phenomenon is endemic to all outpatient and procedure-based medical specialties. Especially eyes and teeth but also including emergency medicine, radiology, gi etc. It absolutely does lead to poorer quality patient care as practices are purchased with a second-liquidity event in mind and thus must show an increase in margins via increased "efficiency." In reality this means less technicians and less doctors seeing more and more patients. Remember that the doctors absorb the liability for poor patient care. Another commenter mentioned that "most physicians are just bad at business" as a factor driving these acquisitions, there may be some truth to this, but the stereotype of the gullible, bumbling physician businessperson is bullshit. All of the practices being acquired were created and run successfully by physicians and many physicians are quite good at it. What is a huge problem is the predatory behaviors of senior partners looking for an exit strategy via equity buyout. I was searching for a job recently and it is almost impossible to find a position that is "partnership track" - something that used to be the norm. Even worse, practices will bring on junior partners with the promise of equity in the practice, force them to sign a non-compete as a term of their employment and then churn them after 2-3 years or worse - sell the practice to an equity firm. There are a lot of things that need to change to create a healthy, diverse healthcare ecosystem, but an easy change that would be to ban physician non-competes. They do nothing but entrench equity firms and regional conglomerates making it impossible for competition to arise. Getting rid of the "certificate of need" regulations and generally decreasing the regulatory burden and thus cost to enter the market for a new competitor would also be a big step. The whole thing is gross. Most physicians want autonomy but don't know where to start. I wish there was a startup that could streamline the process - automate or outsource the front and back end work and sell or lease "starter practices" or something.
- bruckie 4y agoI think this cuts both ways. I have a friend who's a recently-retired partner in an ophthalmology practice, and it was very difficult for him to find someone who wanted to buy into the partnership to take his spot. He said that many docs these days just want to go to work, do their job, and go home, without dealing with all of the additional burdens that come with owning a business. He thinks that's a big contributing factor to the corporatization of medical practice.
- ubermonkey 4y agoMy GOD I hate corporate vet clinics. My dad was a vet. I'm older (52), but in the era and honestly well into my adulthood, vet clinics were generally sole proprietorships or sometimes professional partnerships. The name on the door was the ownership, not beancounters in an office tower somewhere. So, took, are the vets I trust our pets with. But I have absolutely noticed this trend of corporate ownership and consolidation, and that has never resulted in better anything for customers or patients.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y agoOn behalf of the dog, thank you, FTC.
- klipklop 4y agoInteresting to see animals get more protections than people. You don't see the FTC doing anything about these private equity firms buying up entire housing stocks in poor/lower-middle class neighborhoods in the south.
- throwaway193948 4y agois there any example where getting acquired by private equity firm actually improved operations for the entity being acquired?
- daniel-cussen 4y agoSo the thing you have to understand about private equity is this: Things are only sacred in the corner of their vision. They may think marriage is sacred, but only if they're not looking into LexisNexis acquisitions of divorce proceedings private documents. They may think abortion is wrong, unless they're dealing with the companies spicing up heartbeat tracks for optimal maternal reluctance to abortion (in either direction, the state decides how to spice the tracks up, I think they're spiced-up tracks that are synched to a spyced up rendition of ventrical pulsing, it's shitty. Sometimes it's real but that doesn't get the percentages desired). They may think they are good, but when the chips are down, they are invariably bad. Just bad, why would I put it any other way? What word do you want me to use instead, how do you want me to water it down? But when the chips are up they're great! They have all this money, *donate* to *causes*, like the museums of New York and Philips [Exeter/Andover], their alma mater, and a list of non-profits the public never hears about because they're too elite, it's not that they don't give. They give. And sometimes they do pull off business miracles, they're super sharp guys, very hard-nosed buttoned down, great students, if an industry requires getting shaken up they'll really shake it up. They're a rebranding of leveraged buy-outs from the 80's, they gut companies. Which companies sometimes need. Like appendicitis or colectomy (removal of colon, should be called colonectomy but doctors are avid boggle players), like in cases of cancer. But, private equity eats what it cuts, so there's a...there's a conflict of interest, I guess you could say. You could say "conflict of interest" instead of "bad".