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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

#291
post #289
post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> best interpretation of "de-financialization" I can imagine "Financialization" means the insistence on seeing "business" as a machine which is to be optimized to maximize return on money. It's in contrast to people doing good work for a fair price. Compare these two veterinary practices. One has an owner who is a vet, who got into the practice because they love animals. They hire staff who love animals. They charge…

The second business goes on to make so much money it can buy the first, unless the owner is very determined to not be bought (insignificant minority).

and in the case of the insignificant minority, the second one sets up a competing shop directly across the street with artificially low prices and waits for the first one to go out of business.

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

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a veterinarian or anyone else has harmed or committed malpractice against your animal, you have the right to present evidence to the police and pursue criminal charges against them. The courts are not an efficient solution, and it's too late for your pet. I don't want to sue people, I want my pet taken care of. > Very curious that despite all of the licensing and regulatory schemes out there, these things still…

>I want my pet taken care of Strict regulations don't guarantee this. Additionally, they can be counterproductive by blocking competition, resulting in only a few compliant vets in your area who might still harm your pet. >I don't want to sue... courts are not efficient If a monopolistic vet knows they won't lose their license or face charges/fines because a court can't take do so, why would they be incentivized to b…

Nobody mentioned strict regulations or eliminating courts. Effective regulation, which is definitely possible, works more than adequately.

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

#293
post #248
post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> best interpretation of "de-financialization" I can imagine "Financialization" means the insistence on seeing "business" as a machine which is to be optimized to maximize return on money. It's in contrast to people doing good work for a fair price. Compare these two veterinary practices. One has an owner who is a vet, who got into the practice because they love animals. They hire staff who love animals. They charge…

> The first kind of business is the kind of capitalism I want, not the second. The problem is there's no rule you can apply that distinguished between those two, in a court of law or elsewhere. Unless you just look at if a bigger firm owns the vet office. But that doesn't help with the upselling vet or the large national organization who wants to help animals.

Yup exactly.

And say the owner-Vet who is doing it from a place of love takes a lone and needs to make some interest payments....what then!

Indebtedness and greed are hard to distinguish when black boxes. Always remember that.

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

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. What an utterly callous statement. We're mostly well paid professionals here on HN, but to suggest that the average american should be able to come up with $500, much less 5k, on a moments notice is laughably out of touch with most people's financial situation.

Being able to come up with $500 or $5k at a moment's notice is part of pet ownership. If your financial situation prevents coming up with it, don't get a pet. You're just shifting irresponsibility in the guise of anti-corporate crusading.

I expect this line of reasoning from corporate mouthpieces. To hear it from the mouth of a provider speaks to to your values.

I think the following quote applies here:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

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

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't there be free discussion on it though? What do you mean by much heat and little to no light?

HN is not a free speech platform, nobody, not the users or the moderators, is obligated to give stories exposure.

That's true, but it seems odd that they're going out of their way to suppress a story.

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

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I want my pet taken care of Strict regulations don't guarantee this. Additionally, they can be counterproductive by blocking competition, resulting in only a few compliant vets in your area who might still harm your pet. >I don't want to sue... courts are not efficient If a monopolistic vet knows they won't lose their license or face charges/fines because a court can't take do so, why would they be incentivized to b…

Nobody mentioned strict regulations or eliminating courts. Effective regulation, which is definitely possible, works more than adequately.

Then explain why people arent tripping over themselves to offer OP veterinary services in his area.

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

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to come up with $500 or $5k at a moment's notice is part of pet ownership. If your financial situation prevents coming up with it, don't get a pet. You're just shifting irresponsibility in the guise of anti-corporate crusading.

I expect this line of reasoning from corporate mouthpieces. To hear it from the mouth of a provider speaks to to your values. I think the following quote applies here: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

No post body was provided.

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

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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 contributin…

What'd he end up doing? I don't know the specifics of your friend's situation, but I hear this a lot from older guys who want absurd buy-ins based largely on good-will.

He eventually found someone, but ended up working a couple of extra years before he could find a buyer. I don't know enough to judge whether the valuation he was looking (or eventually got) for was reasonable or not.

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

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An average of 5.5% margin against revenue in the *trillions of dollars* is astonishingly profitable.

What is the purpose of comparing a profit margin percentage to nominal revenue? Are you claiming that profit margin percentage should always go down in a competitive market as revenue goes up? Do you have sufficient knowledge about the scalability and marginal costs of a business to be able to make that claim? Also where you getting "trillions" of dollars of revenue from? UHC - $300B, Anthem - $145B, CVS - $300B, Cig…

Thanks, you've just confirmed the original point that health insurance firms are a vastly larger part of our economy than they are of any other economy. The naive impression might be that they just impose a 5% rent on our health, because why not? That alone wouldn't account for our spending twice as much as any other nation for often inferior care. In fact, they distort the healthcare market in insidious ways, causing huge harms, just so they can extract their cut. Removing these firms from our economy, which we will do eventually because we'll have no choice, will restore far more than 5% to productive use.

Visit any health clinic, hospital, or doctor's office. If you count, you'll find that the office staff devoted to handling insurance rival those devoted to patient care. (It isn't strange for the former to outnumber the latter.) They're not just sending in claims. They're dealing with claims rejected for ever more specious reasons, figuring out alternative "codes" to forestall those rejections, verifying that patients have insurance, explaining to patients that the insurance they bought from daytime TV commercials doesn't actually cover anything, collecting old debts inherent to the "bill insurance first then send the patient a bill six months later" model, etc.

Obviously all of that is a giant waste that does nothing to make anyone healthier. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. With few exceptions, the costs of insured procedures are completely unknown at the time the procedures occur. It's no surprise that when consumers have no information whatsoever, the market doesn't properly allocate resources. (Sure, we can argue that healthcare shouldn't be provided via a market, but given that it is, that market should be somewhat functional.) Drug prices are also opaque, given the secret negotiations and kickbacks among drug marketers, insurers, healthcare executives, and regulators. The worst thing about USA healthcare, which causes most of the other problems, is the ferocious price inflation, and that is almost entirely caused by the way we use health insurance.

All of the things that insurers do, besides just paying, harm patients and make healthcare worse. They distort the market more than they extract rents from it. It's as if they have a great bonfire burning cash, and we should compliment them because they only shove 5% of the money in their pockets while shoveling the rest into the fire.

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