Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FTC acts against private equity firm’s acquisition of veterinary clinics

ftc.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 299 posts

Re: FTC acts against private equity firm’s acquisition of veterinary clinics

#101

Post by snapetom »

Freebytes wrote: post #35
AlotOfReading wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My 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…

Emergency vets in many places will demand you pay $5,000 upfront (within minutes before surgery is performed) or your pet dies. Then, your pet will die anyway. It is a sad and exploitative industry.

>It is a sad and exploitative industry.

What an insulting, belittling comment. I don't know why you think veterinarians are charities, and don't know why feel entitled to pay people less than they're worth.

Veterinarians hold doctorates. Four years of undergrad, four years of vet school. Many emergency vets are board certified, meaning they've done an additional 3+ years in internships and residencies.

In running a practice, ideally you also want a 3-1 ratio of techs to doctors to monitor patients. Many states require at least an AA degree to become licensed. These days, it's common to find people who have undergrad degrees who go into vet nursing as a career. Therefore, clinics are paying for 3 others with degrees.

Add in costs like support staff, and the fact that 80% of medicine and equipment are repurposed from human use. Distributors don't give a shit that it's for animals and will charge a vet clinic the same as a human hospital.

Don't blame the vet for charging $5000 for a surgery. Blame owners who can't afford to raise a pet but have one anyway.

Re: FTC acts against private equity firm’s acquisition of veterinary clinics

#102

Post by whimsicalism »

colinmhayes wrote: post #56
samstave wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BlackStone Vangauard Etc. There have been COUNTLESS videos about the above and how much they own. These are the monopolies we should be going after.

Index funds almost never vote with their shares. To say that vanguard having equity ownership without utilizing their voting rights leads to market failures seems incredibly naive.

That's... just not true. Vanguard absolutely votes its shares.

Re: FTC acts against private equity firm’s acquisition of veterinary clinics

#103

Post by markovbot »

whimsicalism wrote: post #96
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #61

Vet 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 clinic…

This is how markets function - rising profits for vets will encourage more providers to enter the market. e: Sorry, sometimes forget what kind of science denialism is cool now. Climate denial out, economics denial in.

I'm sure that'll be a huge relief to all the people who no longer afford healthcare for their pets. Maybe they simply should have not been poor!

Re: FTC acts against private equity firm’s acquisition of veterinary clinics

#104

Post by sokoloff »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #81
ensignavenger wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain this more? If the corp vets are price gouging, why are consumers choosing them over the smaller vets?

I go to a smaller vet with good prices and good care. They are not currently taking new customers/patients.

We're in a similar boat. We only got our new dog into the practice because they'd cared for our previous dog for 13 years. The prices aren't great, but they're bearable and the staff there are absolutely first-rate animal lovers.

Re: FTC acts against private equity firm’s acquisition of veterinary clinics

#105

Post by amelius »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #61

Vet 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 clinic…

Dentists will go down the same route.

Re: FTC acts against private equity firm’s acquisition of veterinary clinics

#106

Post by beckingz »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #60
Freebytes wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emergency vets in many places will demand you pay $5,000 upfront (within minutes before surgery is performed) or your pet dies. Then, your pet will die anyway. It is a sad and exploitative industry.

I've found that the people actually providing veterinary healthcare are some of the biggest animal lovers you're ever going to meet. They adore animals to frankly unhealthy degrees. If even the local family-owned vet clinic is also doing something, it's usually not because they want to exploit hurt animals and exploit you, it's motivated by the necessities of the industry. In this case, non-payment is a huge issue fo…

Yeah, the people I know who work in veterinary healthcare love animals. Many of them end up burning out because they have to deal with so much animal death.

Re: FTC acts against private equity firm’s acquisition of veterinary clinics

#107

Post by whimsicalism »

samstave wrote: post #97
jjtheblunt wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? They're not monopolies.

Is the Fed not a monopoly on your FIAT American Note? Just because they have "12 independent 'Member Banks'? You're understanding of a monopoly is outdated. Plus, you're likely to knee-jerk with a "Thats not the defenition of a monopoly!" Cool get all semantic on the third grade defenition of an insanely nuanced issue. Monopoly in the dictionary sense is the same as a fucking sound-bite from the news on a highly comp…

Yes, the Fed is a sanctioned quasi-governmental monopoly, just like the police or the taxman is.

You'll note that "the Fed" was not in your original list. Also, definition is spelled definition.

Re: FTC acts against private equity firm’s acquisition of veterinary clinics

#108

Post by webnrrd2k »

bombcar wrote: post #4
lordleft wrote: post #2

Interesting. 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.

There'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.

I go to a small optometry practice, and I was told by my optometrist, several years ago, that it was a common thing for practices to be bought up by large corporations. They then sweat-shop the employees in an attempt to extract maximum returns. My optometrist didn't want to work like that so he (and his partners) didn't sell. But, in Southern California, it's a common thing for optometrist to build up a practice and flip it to larger companies.

Re: FTC acts against private equity firm’s acquisition of veterinary clinics

#109

Post by eclipticplane »

bombcar wrote: post #4
lordleft wrote: post #2

Interesting. 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.

There'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.

To a lesser extent you can throw funeral homes into that mix. A few companies control many of them and buy more of them every year. They keep their local names. You still work with "Jacobs And Sons Funeral Services, established 1912" but really you're just paying Service Corporation International.

Re: FTC acts against private equity firm’s acquisition of veterinary clinics

#110

Post by tyrfing »

jessaustin wrote: post #79
tyrfing wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

It's mostly health insurance firms. That's a much bigger sector in USA than it is anywhere else on earth.

Low single-digit operating margins aren't typically described as "so profitable" in any other context.
Post reply on HN