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

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

#261

Post by [deleted] »

conductr wrote: post #180
legitster wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked with people who did (human) clinic roll ups. Part of the issue at hand is that doctors and physicians are notoriously bad businesspeople. So once they build up a big enough practice, a lot of them will jump on the chance to sell the side of the business that they hate to a management firm.

I’ve hands on done these roll ups in mass (a ton of tiny M&A deals) and I would not characterize the physicians that way at all. They are generally fairly savvy small business owners and they always saw their practice as a retirement/nest egg. They also tend to burn out on all the insane regulations/insurance/employer/etc hoops they have to jump through and as a small business they tend not to have negotiating power…

[deleted]

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

#262

Post by ShrigmaMale »

conductr wrote: post #180
legitster wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked with people who did (human) clinic roll ups. Part of the issue at hand is that doctors and physicians are notoriously bad businesspeople. So once they build up a big enough practice, a lot of them will jump on the chance to sell the side of the business that they hate to a management firm.

I’ve hands on done these roll ups in mass (a ton of tiny M&A deals) and I would not characterize the physicians that way at all. They are generally fairly savvy small business owners and they always saw their practice as a retirement/nest egg. They also tend to burn out on all the insane regulations/insurance/employer/etc hoops they have to jump through and as a small business they tend not to have negotiating power…

Similar experience in PE a while back, know a lot of people who still do it, and yeah a lot of small business owners are cashing out right now as boomers retire. Between that and all the dry powder PE has on hand after recent massive raises there will be a lot of buying businesses going on, lots more than even a decade back. Especially now that inflation is stressing retirement savings and costs of everything are rising so fast while people will be looking more to private markets to up returns in bad economic conditions.

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

#263

Post by ROTMetro »

temp8964 wrote: post #150
whimsicalism wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Come on! Navie understanding of the market/society is a virtue. Profit is always bad for public good. The market is just failing everywhere. Captial investment is ruining everything. Downvotes prove you are wrong.

Where is anyone saying that? They are saying Cartels are bad. Artificially capturing the market so you can dictate pricing or can push hard upsells and no longer worry about customer good will because there is no longer an alternative decent vet to deal with is not creating 'public good'.

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

#264

Post by bombcar »

eclipticplane wrote: post #109
bombcar wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, and a big part of this is they used to be generational family businesses, but now the "and Sons" often don't want to carry on, so after they've serviced Jacobs they sell.

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

#265

Post by bombcar »

webnrrd2k wrote: post #108
bombcar wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can make a moderately comfortable bonus living this way IF the companies are remote and your clients are local - build business, flip to company, wait a bit, start a new one, wait for the old to implode, get your customers back, and repeat.

Similar to a guy I knew who sold his restaurant four times, each time buying it back for a song from the new owner who couldn't make it work out.

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

#266

Post by Xeoncross »

larkost wrote: post #243
Xeoncross wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What 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.

The 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 outcome…

> Government and private insurance raises prices

> we in the U.S. demonstrably pay more per person that the rest of the "developed" world

It's possible both of these can be true. Government ownership increases prices and we happen to be towards the worst end of the spectrum in terms of real overhead by such a system.

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

#267

Post by ryan93 »

shkkmo wrote: post #138
Ericson2314 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"financialization" is more a boogieman than a solid concept. More competition (the best interpretation of "de-financialization" I can imagine) is not very solid solution for something like healthcare (or yes pet care) where the demand being inelastic makes "ransoming" easy.

Markets can work fine with inelastic demand if there is adequate information, freedom of choice and proper regulations.

Unfortunately government restricted the supply of doctors below population growth.

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

#268

Post by akira2501 »

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 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.

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

#269

Post by MrFantastic »

whimsicalism wrote: post #115
eatsyourtacos wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>why are consumers choosing them It's interesting that most people who like to defend the free market act as if consumers actually have choices most of the time. That's just simply not the case nearly all the time.. or it's a complete illusion of choice. Especially in any rural/smaller suburban area (of which the US predominantly is). It's not as if you have 1000 choices for everything around. That's only in large ur…

Most people are faced by more than one choice of vet. Most people do not live in rural areas. If vets are able to charge high prices and people will still pay them, maybe more vets will enter the market to provide services to the underserved market.

Most people would not know how to identify the most skilled vet clinics.

For consumers to make informed choices, they need to have some understanding of the domain.

If a Vet says Rover needs a XYZ procedure, how would the pet owner understand what a fair price is or what other treatment options are?

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

#270

Post by samstave »

pc86 wrote: post #192
samstave wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hedge 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 control…

They're definitely not money laundering by any real definition of the word. If your goal is to launder money you're probably not doing it by buying stocks and vet clinics.

I always wanted to start a mafioso-esque restaurant front....

The French Money Laundry

FML for shot.

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