291–300 of 362 posts
A friend of mine is a Vet at a place recently sold to a PE firm. If your wait times are crazy long, if you can't get through on a phone, if you realize your vet's office has parted ways with the great vet you used to see -- that's the PE firm counting beans and destroying the service for customers in an effort to squeeze every dollar out of the system. As a specific obviously bad example -- Vet services in California…
So start a Vet outfit and take their customers away.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In my opinion, the physician in this example is a monster. Profit maximization is a choice, not some kind of moral imperative. They've had a career of treating patients. I think they've satisfied the moral imperative already. And selling to PE doesn't necessarily equate to "profit maximization". It could just mean "decent sale". As the OP said, often there simply isn't anyone available to buy it out at the timeline…
> They've had a career of treating patients. I think they've satisfied the moral imperative already. No offense (really), but speaking from professional experience, I think this is naive and contributing to a lot of reasons why healthcare costs have started to spiral out of control. There are moral doctors, and immoral ones, and everything in between. I'm not really sure why healthcare provision as an economic transa…
A family doctor in my hometown used to be able to afford a house in the nicest neighbourhood on their earnings. They didn't have to talk about money, and when they sold their practice they were happy to make sure it went into the right hands and sold it for a reasonable amount of money.
These days a family doctor can get a 2 bed condo or a townhouse near their practice, or they can have a long commute with something larger. After paying for office expenses, childcare (which also suffers from Baumol's cost disease) and their more expensive education, there's far less for retirement. You really have to maximize what you get out of your practice when you sell it.
I know there's a long history of it being "a calling" and expecting sacrifice. That's still expected, and yet the same rewards aren't there as in the past. Nobody in the past looked like a greedy asshole because they didn't have to ask for more money or really worry about anything. It was set up your practice and live your life on autopilot.
Despite the directions the interviewer tried steering this conversation into, this is a really interesting interview. But when it comes to the private equity roll-ups, I think everyone is missing the forest for the trees. If you are a doctor looking to retire and sell your business there is no one else right now who would buy it . The same goes for every category of "mom and pop" business in the US. Even if you could…
The partnership model exists for exactly this scenario and has thrived for centuries in every sector. If a doctor wants to retire they are obligated sell their share of the business to other partners, not outside entities. When a new partner is promoted they have to buy their way in. All of these problems are solved. If PE firms are getting involved it is due to either greed or mismanagement (or both), not some inher…
If you look at the richest people in America in 1985 and adjust their wealth for inflation no one even makes the top 100 in 2023.
If the richest person in America only has 5 billion in 2023 USD then systemically there is just not enough liquidity to think about the risk/reward of buying a vet.
We have basically diluted the price of all businesses and all assets. With the amount of liquidity in the system you can either have it pool and do nothing or buy business you would never have previously.
This is the price we pay for avoiding what probably would have been two depressions from the financial crisis and covid.
Everything in economics is a trade off. It is very hard to say if we would be better off or not. If we had spent the last 15 years of life dealing with two depressions who knows what society looks like now. It is a very different answer if you are 20 or 45 too I imagine.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> aggravating (e.g., self-checkout lanes... self-checkout lanes are not viewed as a bad thing by many. Given the option of a self checkout or staffed checked, I'd choose self checkout. The negative aspect of self-checkout is that it's usually paired with the store being understaffed, instead of redirecting the freed up staff to other roles.
Where am I supposed to put all the groceries? They have to stay on the scale, but the scale is very small.
I have a pet theory: there are managerially-minded university graduates who value prestige more than power or pay. In the post-War era, they became beige-suited company men. In my generation, they went corporate finance. Today, they work for private equity. Banking was great. Everyone–from liberal arts to engineering majors–could putz around for years in a pre-defined and prestigious path with moderately above-market…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
After the n-th supermarket merger in my small town making every major supermarket in town a subsidiary of Albertsons, the inventory management was so bad that empty shelves started and continue to be an occurrence. Worse, the fresh produce declined in both quality and selection. But hey, the Kroger-Albertsons merger is before us... I hope the antitrust analysis blocks it, but really it's already too late.
We'd wait until we had a long enough list to make the drive worthwhile, and then drive to the Big City to take care of the list.
A friend of mine is a Vet at a place recently sold to a PE firm. If your wait times are crazy long, if you can't get through on a phone, if you realize your vet's office has parted ways with the great vet you used to see -- that's the PE firm counting beans and destroying the service for customers in an effort to squeeze every dollar out of the system. As a specific obviously bad example -- Vet services in California…
Surely that's an easy antitrust win to point out, it's gotta be causing significant consumer harm to be labelled so boldly as a selling point!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My dad spent his last 3 years in a nursing home. When he passed, the nurses cried. I was surprised, I thought they were just doing a job and didn't actually care. I was wrong, and was very grateful to them.
He was probably one of the really nice people they took care of, unlike the nasty old men that constantly sexually harassed and assaulted them, so he made their day a lot brighter and was one of the reasons they stayed with the job.
A friend of mine is a Vet at a place recently sold to a PE firm. If your wait times are crazy long, if you can't get through on a phone, if you realize your vet's office has parted ways with the great vet you used to see -- that's the PE firm counting beans and destroying the service for customers in an effort to squeeze every dollar out of the system. As a specific obviously bad example -- Vet services in California…
That sounds bad for the customer, but how does that play out for the owners? Does this sort of behavior end up working out better for them financially? If so, despite how bad it sounds, it does seem like they end up with more efficient economics (assuming it's sustainable). If not, then surely the PE firms will suffer too right?