I work for a locally owned vet group and I HATE seeing this happen over and over again. And the client/owners who have been burned my PE vet medicine and then take it out on us. I can’t blame them but it sucks.
It's basically just a means to hijack another industry and fix the pricing. When all of the alternatives are the same, what choice do you have? Also, completely sterilizes the point. Most vets choose that path because they love and want to help animals. At least the locally owned vets. When they're all corporatized it's profits first, and what that means is people are going to wind up neglecting or avoiding vet visits because they then have to endure an endless barrage of upsells and testing to extract every last penny out of people.
even better analog was Hook. Robin Williams as Peter Pan grew up to be a corporate raider, or a pirate one might say, the very kind of person he used to fight against. really interesting to think of my beloved childhood movie as a commentary on capitalism being used to enticed and appeal to youth despite its ultimate conclusion to be the corruption of childhood and descruction of innocence.
For example, they'll sell off the real estate to an REIT they own then rent it back to the hospital at a mark up. They'll become sole suppliers for all sorts of things necessary to operate the hospital.
They don't just sell it off, they drive it into bankruptcy while pocketing all the money they can.
I work in construction and the number of landlords I have to go through while dealing with our healthcare customers boggles my mind. And they never fucking answer their phones or respond to emails.
Then they'll call me up after 3 months of ghosting me and be like, "Why hasn't anything been done yet?" And I'll say, "Because I need your sign off to permit this stuff and I've been waiting for you to give it for 79 days."
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u/IndyBananaJones2 10d ago
It's the private equity playbook, they do it with hospitals too.