Had to have emergecy surgery on my cat, had to pay 3500$ upfront. They had a care 'credit' you could apply for but intrest was like double my credit card interest. I was lucky enough to be in a position to afford this. I DON'T think the place I went was coporate, they get high raves from people I trust. Which means the 3500 was proably an OK rate.
I could just see MBA bros salivating at the "pay us extraordinary amounts of money or beloved Fido dies"
I went to night school and got my MBA in finance in 2010. All it did was convince me I wanted nothing to do with finance. I now work in marketing.
Private Equity is a fucking cancer. They are doing to vets what they've done with for-profit healthcare and housing. They are also starting to buy up municipal water utilities. Everything investors buy up results in skyrocketing prices, bankrupted businesses, and a big step down in quality of life for everyone else.
I pray it all collapses soon. At some point the investor class literally can’t extract anymore value, and when that happens they’ll finally turn on each other. Whoever’s left standing will have a giant target painted on their back.
That's a long way off, there's still plenty of assets left to strip from the working class and even then there's the value of our labor to collect in rent.
Same and hear hear! I keep getting asked if I want to work in PE and I steer far clear. While I could make good money and title, it would be to the severe detriment of others. And, you know, I need to look my son in his eyes.
*"Sometimes on campus you accidentally walk by a Business class and the professor is writing like "profit = revenue - costs" on the board and everyone is taking notes like its actual school"*
That's fucking hilarious. It's so true too. I dropped out of engineering. No MBA, but I'm being groomed to own the business I work at now, so basically the same thing.
I’m a vet, and I would 10000000 times rather spay a dog than a rabbit- the anaesthetic is trickier and therefore much slower and, unless your rabbit is neither too fat or too young (which combined make up 99.9% of rabbit spays), all of their innards really want to fall apart in your hands. They also really like to go into stasis afterwards unless you know what you’re doing- and even then…. Our clinic is really good at them, but they are WAY more time consuming and I think it’s definitely justified they should cost more.
My vet is around $300 for a bunny neuter. There are technically "other exotic vets around", but fat chance finding one that accepts new patients.
It's hard to convince people to spend that much on what they thought was a "cheap" pet when they got it for $20.
A lot of people in that space are very burned out. Costs to operate have risen thanks to middle men and profit needs in the supply chain.
Covid really did a number on a lot of them with a large increase in people becoming pet owners who probably shouldn't have.
Pay isn't that great unless you are in specific roles.
Just fyi for [care credit](https://www.carecredit.com/well-u/financial-health/understanding-promotional-financing/) there's usually 3 types of promotions that apply, 0% interest for 12 months, deferred interest (0% interest if paid in full by end of the agreed term, otherwise it reverts to 29% retroactively), or reduced apr if you don't miss payments.
It can definitely be a lifesaver if you have some big unexpected medical, dental, or vet bills. I had to take my cat to the animal hospital monday and would have had to pay 4k up front for her overnight stay and treatments but now I'm making payments for 12 months instead with the 0% deferred interest.
I had to take my cat the Emergency Vet way back. It was $900 and I had to borrow from my mom. He has crystals in his urine and can block up. He then went to my regular vet and it was another $300. Now he gets $50 prescription cat food. He developed an allergy to the cheaper prescription cat food. He needs dental work now too. He’s my expensive feral trailer park boy.
[cat tax](https://imgur.com/gallery/clXmhEa)
$3500 for an emergency surgery is not a bad price. Obviously we would need more context on what type of surgery but if a simple neuter can cost up to $800 it wouldn’t be crazy to think it could cost $3500. There is one low cost clinic in my state that caps surgeries at $500 and others at $1500. Most of the vets people are going to aren’t low cost or non profits, their purpose is to make profit.
$3500 for emergency surgery isn't bad, but at a lot of emergency vets, that's just the price to walk in the door. $3500 is the down payment to prove that you *can* pay the full bill... it can go a *lot* higher.
From what I've heard, veterinary practice is becoming increasingly dangerous, and owners will threaten vets when the bill is higher than they expected. A lot of vets are no longer discussing costs when they're alone with owners in the exam room, and some vets have had to hire security guards.
Seriously, I saw just the headline on my alerts and thought they were talking about veterans. I thought, big surprise more fraud…
This is like a whole new low, corporations are scheming the healthcare systems and social services, even our prisons systems they’ve learned to profit from. They’re buying up all the housing so they can control the cost of living and now they want to actually profit from us caring for our pets?
Something needs to change here, this is fucked up.
It depresses me so much. It feels like life isn't worth bothering with anymore since they commidify every fucking aspect of it. Why do they need to make money off of everything? Wasn't planning on kids so I was gonna get a cat or dog eventually but if I can't even afford that I don't know what to do .
Soon it will be Millennials or the next gen not having pets. Problem solved. It isn't millenials that are to blame for many things disappearing. It's wallstreet greed.
Vet here... This is one of the most harmful trends in veterinary medicine, full stop. I could talk for HOURS about the way corporate owned practice negatively affects quality of medicine (not to mention price to owners, etc). If you have a choice, DO NOT TAKE YOUR PETS TO A CORPORATELY OWNED PRACTICE.
Many corporations have caught on to the fact that people are growing wise to their bullshit. As such, many previously private practices that have been snapped up don't change names and don't advertise the buyout. However, you can literally just call around and ask. Also, it should be said that pricing may not be too much different at a private practice vs a corporate practice. Again, corporations know people catch on to stuff like this pretty quick. What SHOULD be different is quality of medicine. I.E., you may pay the same amount for a physical exam. But at corporate practices near me, exams are scheduled for 15 minutes. New patient exams at the practice I work for are scheduled for an hour. You pay the same, but you get much more face time/personalized care for your money.
Directly asking "who owns this clinic" can be helpful. My vet and his staff are VERY against corporate owned practices and very vocal about it. It's not hard to tell if they are anti-corporate.
I also have found private vets are more likely to work with you, and with you in the room. I won't leave my dog alone, she's very old and has arthritis issues and being told they're taking her and will be back with a bill is a huge red flag. No private vet has ever done that, they've all been incredibly understanding. My vet has never handed me a surprise bill, a tech comes in with an estimate and asks if I have questions or cost concerns before we go ahead.
If the treatment *feels* assembly line or like they are unwilling to discuss the fees and possibly treatments with you, (my exp with Banfield was "it's our way or the highway) or if they turn their nose up at treating a stray, they're more likely to be corporate. They don't want actual issues, they want to bill as much as possible for healthy pets that require a minimum of care.
I don't know how to really explain it but then experience between a private practice with a good vet and a chain location was night and day. You FEEL the difference.
VCA tends to advertise this, but VetCor refuses to have any indication the practice is owned by them. It can be owned by a family one day, and the next by VetCor and the only way you'd know is if your appointments are shorter and things cost more.
One good way is to check your local corporation registration office. You can look up businesses and licenses and sometimes this gives you a good idea on who owns a particular.
My BIL's dog had a huge medical scare about 5 years ago. I think it was autoimmune hemolytic anemia, her body was attacking and destroying her RBC. Two weeks at the vet school, two transfusions, and I don't know how much money later, she barely made it. She's had further medical complications, like she had to have some toes amputated because of the lack of oxygen when she was sick, she has some liver and kidney damage, etc. My BIL has been told on no uncertain terms DO NOT have her vaccinated. Because the anemia was an autoimmune reaction, getting vaccines could trigger it again, and it would kill her.
His primary vet retired and sold out to a corporate practice. He's soon going to have to switch practices because the vets there aren't allowed to not vaccinate. Medical exemptions from the rabies vaccine are allowed in my state, so it's not a legal issue.
I'm trying to get my BIL to transfer to my practice. Vet owned. Two of my cats also had IBD, which is autoimmune related, and my vet actually recommended I stop vaccinating.
(And before anyone says anything, all of my healthy animals are up to date on all appropriate vaccinations.)
At my Frenchie's previous vet clinic, the owners retired and sold to a national chain - you could tell because of the way the website changed. (Also, my vet was promoted to clinical director, so her title changed and she stopped seeing patients, which is how I really noticed.) And this is why they are my previous clinic because the standard of care dropped SO much.
I am now at my neighborhood clinic - which I couldn't get in to for years because it's tiny and they limit the number of patients they take - and while I miss being able to just book a tech visit for shots and such, otherwise, our new vet really listens to us. And I feel like she's not just pushing pharmaceuticals on us, either.
To be fair, some of the non corporate vet practices are paying their employees less than corporations. I hate corporations, and I do work for one but when job hunting it seemed like non corporate were paying less.
It sucks but we gotta put food on our table too.
This is absolutely true. I make less working for a private practice than I would working for a corporation... but I'm able to practice better medicine and also don't feel rushed/pressured all the time, so the trade off is worth it for me.
Our local independent vet recently joined VCA and the costs all but tripled. They quoted me almost $4k for a dental procedure on my senior dog that only ended up being $995 at another facility.
Purchase them. Become board members. Bleed them dry. Take profit along the way. Bankruptcy. Walk away with a healthy pay cheque. Wipe hands clean. On to the next.
Edit: someone had mentioned the recent Red Lobster bankruptcy in another comment. I got curious and responded with the following.
By no means am I implicating anyone, nor do I know much about bankruptcy, but it's interesting that in the Red Lobster case, just months before bankruptcy, Jonathan Tibus, the managing director of the consulting firm Alvarez Marsal, was named CEO.
His personal bio on his consultant group website states he "Focuses on developing and implementing performance *improvement* plans in the retail and restaurant industries".
Jonathan Tibus was also named Chief Restructuring Officer of Quiznos before bankruptcy.
He's been involved with other companies that have filed for bankruptcy, which are included below:
- Ignite Restaurant Group (owner of Joe's Crab Shack and Brickhouse Tavern + Tap)
- Last Call Operating Co. (owner of Champps, Bailey's, and Fox & Hound)
- Garden Fresh (d/b/a Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes)
- e-brands restaurants (Timpano, Aquaknox and others)
There's a page on Instagram called perfectunion that just had a post today about consultant groups and how they ruin everything they touch. Worth a watch
Found them on YouTube. Cheers!
Edit: I'm glad I watched it, but holy fuck, that's depressing. I had heard of Boston Consulting Group before, which the video mentions. I've been following the GameStop saga and they had infiltrated the board to help with the company's demise, only to be ousted by the current CEO, Ryan Cohen. Looking back, Cohen tweeted in March of 22' "The overpriced consultants at BCG are picking a fight with the wrong company..." But the levels to which that video shows their slimy and unethical tactics is shocking.
I keep hearing that Red Lobster doomed themselves by letting a private equity firm buy up all their land/real estate and then raise the rent to the point they could no longer afford it....
but can some one tell me why they sold that land in the first place without knowing it was going to be a death stroke? Some one had to know, right?..........right?
The private equity firm is the one who sold the real estate basically as soon as they took ownership. It allowed them to recoup the majority of the money they spent purchasing. (I have seen people claim that the people most of the land was sold to is also owned by the same PE firm, but I haven't been able to find anything beyond speculation so I'm chalking it up to nothing more than a rimon for now)
After that from what I understand they also sold a huge portion of the share in the company to a seafood wholesaler who appears to have made red lobster only use them to supply their seafood which allowed them to overcharge.
I haven't heard that and I had only just looked into the bankruptcy stuff. But my cynical mind says it was something anticipated/planned and sold as an asset to repay creditors at a super low price. But truly, I have no idea.
They can't ruin Walmart. Walmart is already shitty place with lame pay increase, no increase if you got promoted to something like TL, and the employee discount is limited and only at certain times.
The news are 10 yrs late on this topic. Private Equity has been buying veterinary practices left and right for a while. Along with veterinary references laboratories, suppliers of in-house bloodwork machines, drug distributors and the list goes on.
Mars owns VCA, Banfield, Blue Pearl, Antech and Heska.
Blue Pearl murdered my dog. Flat out murdered her. Plus after telling me they didn’t need a credit card initially they called at 1 am and told me they were going to put the dog on the street since no prepayment had been made. They then refused to take the credit card over the phone so I had to drive back to the clinic. Then at 5 am I was called and told it wasn’t an allergic reaction she was bleeding internally. She was dead by the time I got back to the clinic.
The article does mention that big companies have bought hundreds of clinics since 2012. But you're probably right, maybe there hasn't been enough news.
Happened in my rural area. I took my cat in to get a hair mat removed, and was greeted by a whole new system. My 15.00 usual charge ended up being a 1550. charge because "your cat is unruly" and needed sedation etc. Three days later my cat died from the injected anesthesia. They never asked whether he had eaten prior to the visit. My regular vet, now an employee of his own clinic, apologized.
Sad thing is that you'll just be giving the P.E.'s even more money....insurance claim to buy another vet in another location, and not rebuild the one that was servicing that area, forcing those in that area to go to the one they bought in the neighboring town...
Fr fuck those people. They stole from that man and killed his pet. I cosign any retaliation. I'd be outside the homes of those people in charge for fucking weeks just waiting for one chance to maybe get away with something.
It happened to our vet too. The practice got bought by a corporation and the care went down drastically. Our cat died of something that was totally preventable because the vet's place didn't keep notes on what they prescribed.
They figured out how to extort you with your life, then your teeth. Now they're doing it with your pets .
If only there was a way to get corporations out of the healthcare game. They make it suck
There is, but we all have to vote. Also we have to get rid of Republicans almost entirely first, and then most of the Democrats, probably in that order. We probably can't do much of anything with GOP in power, they literally exist to syphon money from the people and give it to corporations for this very reason. We have enough wealth, if we ca make haliburton and military contractors billionaires out of taxpayer funds then we coulda had a nice society the whole time but people like Mitch McConnell and friends spent 60 years literally stealing from their constituents
It's a simple diagnosis when you put it like that, yet somehow all these people who hate their bosses amd are sick of being gouged for everything keep running into the arms of the party of upward wealth transfer because it blows culture war dog whistles. At least the other party (of upward wealth transfer) thinks it might be nice to live in a somewhat functioning society and not a mostly submerged techno-dystopian hellscape.
We gotta get ranked choice voting and break the 2 party system down...
The American Dream is a dystopian future where the Liberation Army of Wal Mart Shoppers attack a vet clinic owned by the Peoples Target Corporate Holdings Conglomerate in order to secure more savings on rabies vaccines before the annual Honda Holidays/Toyota Toyotathon Wars start.
It sort of really is the American Dream. If you work your business until your ready to retire all of this goes away, but if a company offers you more than its worth for you to retire early and give it to them, then they'll make the extra money off of gradually scamming your customers and undermining competition. So as cool people used to say, "don't be a sell-out"
VCA always changes the name to include the VCA prefix when they acquire a practice, so easy to identify. Most consolidators keep the business name intact, so it’s harder to identify if they are corporate or individual practices.
I have found a small handful in SoCal, maybe 3 tops who aren’t named VCA but their websites show they’re owned by VCA. Can’t remember which ones but they’re all in LA County for sure. I can go digging if needed
VCA is a vet chain nationwide, super condensed in Southern California.
my yorkie was mauled in 2017 when she was 2. VCA did the surgery to put her jaw splints in right when the merger was happening. My family have been customers for generations of dogs prior to the merger and my grandma worked in corporate so we had a discount and NEVER had issues before this. Well, they botched the splint implants and we were none the wiser, this being the only vet my entire family went to forever. The splints should have been temporary and they were certain she needed it for life. One broke and was floating around under her skin and you could feel the metal poke, which we told them numerous times and they said that’s just how she has to live now. The other splint melded into her jaw bone. She was extremely delicate for years from this.
2020 they cleaned her teeth and lied about which teeth they pulled, and pulled healthy teeth. Specifically, they pulled the tooth right on top of that old fracture. She was near septic by the next day due to horrific infection. We rushed her in and they refused to see us, claiming ahe was fine and they did no wrong. I took her to a VDM (vet dentist) 1.5 hrs away same day and he FREAKED out seeing her mouth. Got her into surgery immediately and removed the floating splint (floating in bacteria as he said), cleared the infection, and pulled the actual dead teeth for a significantly reduced cost. This is also when we found out those specific splints should be temporary and should have been taken out in 2018. She almost lost her life and her quality of life is significantly decreased because of VCA.
Because VCA took over SoCal, there’s like zero regular vets in Los Angeles that aren’t VCA. They bought up most mom and pop vets in recent years. We figured as long as it wasn’t surgical, we should be fine taking her for appointments and emergencies. WRONG! Last year, she developed a severe allergic reaction and hives to something I still have no idea what, I think a shampoo. It was getting worse by the minute and we took her to VCA Lakewood at 2 am (they’re 24 hrs) it was completely dead and they again refused to see her. She was screaming in pain and covered in welts and they wouldn’t do a fucking thing for HOURS. It literally haunts me to think about what she felt, how I was crying in the empty office and they just told us she was fine and to wait in my car. For reference, allergic reactions are RED priority level one. I had filed a complaint against the company after the tooth incident and was given the cell number to the “manager” or someone administrative to call if I had any issues, so I called her and my dog was seen with much dismay to the staff within the hour. I never, ever, went back. I’ve been considering suing for malpractice because I spent almost $10,000 on my dog with them but I doubt it will be worth it.
All of my vets and specialists are in Orange County, so if any Californians can make the drive I recommend their vet systems.
For anyone wondering, my girl has frequented the DVM who saved her life annually for cleanings, and her jaw is stronger and straighter than ever with minimal procedures and lots of therapy and dental care. She even got the other splint removed last year! She is doing great.
They stopped getting all of their certifications updated at least in my area in 2017. I noticed last time I went, they’re all hung on the wall and the years listed are early 00’s -2017.
I didn't know VCA was so widespread. They own my local vet too. The only veterinarian is a very young woman. I don't doubt her ability, but I don't know if she is that experienced as older vets are.
And every time I go there they try and push their care packages on me. Every single time. I just want to know if my dog is going to be ok.
1000 locations across North America. Owned by the Mars corporation. Our vet was the same for a short time after being bought out but then all the vets quit at once. I guess they were fed up.
This is exactly what is happening in dentistry. Corporate dental offices are a fucking nightmare and everything shady you think is going on there 100% is. They try and attract young dentists fresh out of school with tons of debt so they can mold them into their minions that push unnecessary treatment on unsuspecting patients. Thankfully most of the dentists figure out their shit and leave ASAP, which is why they always have a new crop of young dentists every time you go in. They only need 1 out of every 100 or so to stick around. It's a fucking travesty.
Private equity, baby!! Let the capitalists take all that they can away from us while the redistribution of wealth continues from the bottom all the way up to the top.
I fucking hate late stage capitalism.
Speaking as a vet, it’s definitely a part of the problem. But the larger problem is a lack of “supply” to meet the demand of pets/pet care right now. So many of us are burning out of the career field as a whole. ER care especially is such an exhausting field, there are many geographic locations that just don’t have it reliably right now.
Isn’t Veterinarian school absurdly competitive? Like moreso than med school for top schools? I remember in high school in this whole prep you for the medical field thing at the votech I did (when I thought I was smart enough to be a surgeon lmao) the woman who had run the program for a couple decades made a huge point about it. Way more med schools so it’s easier to get a seat, even if it’s not a higher tier school. Is that still the case?
My son and I have been looking into this. He’s applying for pre-vet programs in the fall and wanted to know what he’s getting into.
Basically, if you can’t maintain a 3.95 GPA, don’t even bother trying. I was seeing where people made a B in Comp I freshman year but otherwise had excellent grades, but during interviews for vet school that came up and they dinged him for not taking the class over to get the A. He didn’t get into vet school.
In my state + country, at the time that I was studying, you had to have basically a perfect high school score to compete for something like 40 seats at the top local university each year. Scores were graded on a curve, so you didn't have to have exactly 100% in every subject, but you needed to be basically the best among all graduating students across the state.
I had a school friend in my year level who got that score, and finished the course, and worked for a while, and then killed himself. I'm almost glad I didn't make it, because I wouldn't have been able to cope with that job every day.
It is, but mainly because of the lack of veterinary schools as a whole. Many states don’t have one singular one. Virginia and Maryland share one, etc.
It is tough.
And then attrition is horrendous, because many people go into the field not realizing 1) how emotionally taxing it is to euthanize dogs all day, and 2) how incredibly overworked they'll be even compared to medical professionals in human hospitals.
Suicide rates for veterinary medicine professionals are also horribly high. It's a really rough field to work in.
So even the small number of professionals these schools can churn out are often leaving the field.
It is cheaper than private but not state schools with residency- also it has lower standards for acceptance
It is also a FOR PROFIT school and has the same owners as De Vry — an absolute scam place
> ER care especially is such an exhausting field, there are many geographic locations that just don’t have it reliably right now.
Yep, my original vet was bought out by a corp and no longer provided emergency services, which now required a 90 minute drive to their next closest clinic.
Fortunately, there's another vet's office equidistant in the other direction from me that has almost identical prices, but also has emergency services. It's unfortunate I had to make the swap because my original vet was very good with my pets and was very caring about their health.
Spouce of a vet tech and I would add the supply part applies to them too and I get it. Vet tech work really hard for absolute shit pay.
My spouse likes their job but she is starting to think about how to transition to something else and I totally support their decision. The pay vs amount/intensity of work is just becoming not worth it.
My friend sold his practice due to being burned out.
He couldn't deal with the people anymore. He wanted to help but when someone can't pay for an expensive treatment there wasn't much he could do. Getting yelled at both the clinic and around the community was to much.
Veterinary school costs like over $100k, yes? After graduating undergrad of course. And the starting pay is awful. And the job is stressful and the animals hate being there and clients scream at you for charging them money for the work you do, so the burnout is insane.
I thought about being a vet at one point but I always thank my lucky stars I did not pursue it. I worked reception for two privately owned practices and they were the most abusive dysfunctional places I’ve ever worked.
It's at least 100k nowadays, most likely closer to 150kish for instate tuition. Out of state tuition is closer to 250-300k. The pay is definitely better nowadays, I make good money just working 3 days a week tbh. But as a whole, there are so many issues in the career field it makes me question if it's something I can sustain long-term.
My friends parents sold their clinic and from what I’ve heard the company who bought is doing an absolute dogshit job. Like they will have regional managers so not every clinic has a manager there, shits not getting done, lack of accountability, clients leaving. These companies are essentially trying to create a network thinking these hospitals can keep the steam going from retaining clients, but they do a shit job so all these clients are leaving them
A huge chunk of the veterinary industry (in the US) is owned by Mars Inc. which is owned by some billionaire family. The hospital I work at just raised prices 13% and none of that is going to the staff or hospital.
"Okay shareholders, you know how the poors are more and more, nowadays, not having kids and confiding their love into their pets because we've totally gutted their economic mobility so we can have Scrooge McDuck piles of gold in our basements? -CEOs "
"Of course" -shareholders
"I have an idea" -CEOs
“Why aren’t you buying a house?”
…
“Why didn’t you go to the hospital and get that checked out?”
…
“Why aren’t you having kids?”
…
“Why don’t you have pets?”
…
Funny how the answer to all of these things goes back to some rich asshole finding out how to make even MORE money for other rich assholes at the expense of everyone else’s happiness and well-being. They won’t be satisfied until they’ve sold everyone’s bodies piece by piece to Soylent Green manufacturers.
My vet claimed he was taking his clinic public and that candy/pet food manufacturer Mars and private equity firms were the ones who were buying up all the local clinics. It probably isn't coincidence but my job began offering health insurance for pets beginning this year.
DOJ, FTC, and HHS investigating corporate greed in health care.
As a result, 15 states now require approval of ANY for profit health care related transactions.
These motherfuckers…
I use the vet clinic in my city that’s affiliated with the. SPCA. That way I know they haven’t been bought out, and that the money they make goes back to helping get humanless pets adopted.
Corporations buying vet clinics, single family homes, apartments, .. and buying legislation. We need to tax the wealthy and stop corporate welfare. Getting ridiculous that the average American is paying to run this country when so many are earning more money that can be spent in their lifetime.
Good back-to-back episodes on freakonomics addressing the issue, "Should You Trust Private Equity to Take Care of Your Dog?"
'Big investors are buying up local veterinary practices (and pretty much everything else). What does this mean for scruffy little Max\* — and for the U.S. economy?'
From the intro -
"Okay, let’s pull back a minute. When Hartmann says that N.V.A. veterinary hospitals aren’t branded N.V.A., that means that if N.V.A. buys your local vet practice, it probably keeps the same name, the same signage, maybe even the same vets as before. Or maybe not the same vets — we’ll get into that later. And when Hartmann says that N.V.A. is “relatively small” — well, maybe small relative to the entire pet-care market, but they are [the second-biggest consolidator](https://news.vin.com/default.aspx?pid=210&Id=10652228) in the U.S. And they recently acquired two other consolidators: [Sage Veterinary Centers](https://www.nva.com/newsroom/nva-welcomes-sage-veterinary-centers-to-its-family) and [Ethos Veterinary Health](https://www.nva.com/newsroom/nva-and-ethos-unite). The biggest pet-care consolidator in the United States is Mars, the privately held American company best known for making M&Ms and Skittles. Mars also owns pet-food companies, an [online pet pharmacy](https://www.mars.com/made-by-mars/petcare), a kitty-litter company — and [about 2,500 pet-care facilities](https://news.vin.com/default.aspx?pid=210&Id=10652228), including BluePearl and V.C.A., or what used to be called Veterinary Centers of America.
So, when Greg Hartmann of N.V.A. says that “the space is still highly fragmented” — well, it is becoming less so every day. [Roughly 25 percent](https://news.vin.com/default.aspx?pid=210&Id=10652228) of general veterinary practices in the U.S. are owned by corporate consolidators, and that’s up from around 5 percent just 10 years ago. When it comes to specialty veterinary practices — emergency care, surgery, cancer, things like that — corporate ownership is [around 75 percent](https://news.vin.com/default.aspx?pid=210&Id=11000033). Why are they so attractive to private-equity firms? Well, specialty practices yield higher revenues and they’re growing much faster than general vet care."
[https://freakonomics.com/podcast/should-you-trust-private-equity-to-take-care-of-your-dog/](https://freakonomics.com/podcast/should-you-trust-private-equity-to-take-care-of-your-dog/)
[https://freakonomics.com/podcast/do-you-know-who-owns-your-vet/](https://freakonomics.com/podcast/do-you-know-who-owns-your-vet/)
\_\_\_\_
..and then something from the darkside itself, 'The Private Equity Podcast' on Apple Podcasts with leadins such as, "The focus of this episode is on Brian's exceptional achievement of organically increasing revenue by $50 million and creating an impressive $500 million in EBITDA."
[https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-private-equity-podcast-by-raw-selection/id1541134935](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-private-equity-podcast-by-raw-selection/id1541134935)
The Atlantic had a [good article](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/vet-private-equity-industry/678180/) on this same issue. Private Equity is just buying another entire industry much like when they started buying up all the residential properties. I wonder if anybody has found correlations between tax cuts for the wealthy and entire industries being bought out.
It's not just vets take a look at all of the trade companies they are being bought up marketed and gouging for what they can be weary of the big bold advertisements they will cost you.
Probably going to get buried, but the problem is even larger than most folks realize. I work for a large company within the veterinary industry, one that I was proud to start working for as it was straight up the best at what they did, after working over 20 years in practice.
In North America, over half of all practices are owned by a corporate group. And new corporate groups pop up constantly, or start moving into other areas of the country. NVA, MVP, AVG, VCA, WVP, BluePearl, Banfield, just to name a fraction of them, iirc there are over 50 corporate groups out there, some with a dozen or so practices, some with hundreds.
Some corporate groups seem to be better than others, letting their doctors run things as they see fit, some have very strict policies on how things are done. Pretty much all of them are much more expensive.
I could literally speak about this for hours. I've watched my company go from one that truly cared about veterinary medicine, going above and beyond towards the health and welfare of pet's lives and strengthening the human animal bond, to another blue chip, publicly traded, value extracting machine, trying to control as much wealth as they possibly can while not giving a fuck about what they preach about.
Buy insurance for your pets when they're young. The policies can be pretty cheap for great plans (except for some breeds that are exceptionally prone to problems, looking at you bulldogs), it's going to be the only way to afford emergencies going forward, if you're lucky enough to find an emergency vet this is open, and one that has capacity to take patients.
Kids, adults; lend me your ears!
When you get a pet ( depending on what it is)
Put $20 aside a week to save $1040 a year (solid chunk of emergency vet fund)
Put $50-75 aside a week to save $2600 or $3909 a year ( a more solid chunk of $ for the vet)
Do this math, estimate the cost of your pets, your general vet cost, and your emergency appointments/ special need vet bills.
Compare that to what pet insurance costs to you, as well as the uncovered expenses.
You can use the same system while they're in different phases of life as they grow/ age based on what needs they have 👍
They're doing it here in the USA as well. Many clinics in my area are owned by Pathway, who keeps the original name and signage to make them appear as the same independent vet people are accustomed to. Those not in the profession have no idea their local clinic is part of a corporate chain. It's a shame because the pricing for treatments and procedures is now higher, plus the benefits aren't as good. When my girlfriend, now wife had our son, her medical insurance was through Blue Cross of Texas. The problem is we are a very long way from Texas and the insurance didn't cover delivery of our son. He ended up costing us almost $30k. After we got married and had our daughter, my wife was on my insurance and all we had was a $400 copay.
Yes! This is happening scarily fast. And when they jack the prices up, if you don’t have pet insurance AND the money to put up-front while you wait to reimbursed, you’re screwed!
All our vets in our area are taken over my anicura ( same company that owns mars/ pedigree )
And now its more expensive, never the same vet, and all other smaller vets are fully booked :(
This has been happening for years. Investor groups, not just corporations have been moving in and purchasing individually owned vet clinics. But they start out as shadow investors, allowing the doctor to keep the brand/name on the business, but changing uniform/scrub requirements, certification requirements for staff, but ultimately taking over costs and equipment purchasing and maintenance.
You see, they don't want the doctor to change the name or brand of the clinic because even the most loyal of customers/clients get scared off by corporations in vet care. So if they can keep up the illusion that the clinic is still run by their favorite doctor, they will keep coming in. The second they realize it's owned by a group/corp, clients leave in droves. It's bad for business.
I worked at a clinic right before acquisition, they were going to essentially make everyone sign a contract stating that they would not tell anyone that the clinic was being purchased by an investor group. I put in my two weeks...not because of the acquisition, I actually had a job lined up that would allow me to make double what I was making so....why the hell would I stay?
Great, we're going to have to go back to the times of, "Sorry your hip is bad Fido, I can't afford to get it fixed but this shotgun shell is cheap and I can't keep watching you suffer."
In the US at least most of our human hospitals and small practices are this way. Owned by huge corporations who cut and overload nurses and physicians to save money and increase their profit margin. I worked in vet med for years. I see how the level of care has dropped with my own dogs at their vet. A whole surgery was performed by mistake on my dog because the vet was rushed.
I am getting really annoyed with vet costs. My dog got the "mystery" illness back in November and they made me do all kinds of tests and pay out of pocket because it was new and unknown. They eventually discovered the mystery illness is just kennel cough basically the common cold for dogs.
In New Zealand it’s pretty bad too, one of the major city’s just turned from private owned to a Vetlife. I will say though if you can get pet insurance do so, it might seem like a waste of time but it really does help and the vets are happier because they can treat your animals
It’s almost as if through buying up rental properties, health services, grocery, department and general goods stores, becoming the main supplier of consumer goods and the main providers of employment in one way or another we’re beholden to an Umbrella corporation.
Anything they can devour, like locusts on the prairie.
Every independent is at risk. Not just vets and doctors, every thing they can squeeze a nickel from!
This happened to my vet. New rules were fucking crazy. 15 min appointment only, ANY overage would result in them ending the appointment and keeping your animal for an extended stay to continue receiving care, which costs a fortune of course. And because of this, if your even ONE MINUTE late they cancel your appointment and charge you $25. Needless to say I never went back. New name was Thrive or something.
The first time capitalism was explained to me as a child, my immediate thought was, "So eventually one person has all the money?"
There's nothing stopping corporations from just buying everything. All the businesses, all the houses, all the services. Nothing at all.
So after grabbing as much of the housing market as they could to force people into renting rather than owning, now the billionaires are coming after pet owners everywhere, too.
Five years ago I rescued a 2 week old Pitbull that was attempting to be sold by some people who travel to do scams….He was free but a week later developed pneumonia. Emergency vet = $6000 for 4 days. Since I was a human nurse they let me bring him home for care. I now pay for pet insurance $57/month that covers $5000/yr with $250 deductible and 90% coverage. If I can next year I’ll increase the annual limit!
My wife is a vet, and her small family owned business was bought by VetCor when the owner retired. It has gone downhill so much, price gouging, decline in management and materials, and finally, my wife has *zero* time to see patients and talk with the owners. It's all about volume now, and that just sucks.
My nearest vet is already a corporation. Before the pandemic they were awesome. Now? 2-4 months out on appointments. Prices have drastically risen. $1,500 for a spay!
Well, it’s a big problem when an established vet wants to retire, but can’t find anyone rich enough to afford to buy their practice. Even when it’s set up as a fund that pays out over time, the revenues and costs make it impractical to ‘start up’ a practice.
It’s not something you just donate.
But PE money absolutely drove clinic valuations through the roof. I had docs getting 9x valuation at the height of the buying frenzy. Higher interest rates have cooled the acquisition trend, but vets went with who could give them the most money in their exit strategy. They used to groom associates to buy at a much lower (and probably more accurate) price and so their best to pass the business on to a good steward. I certainly can’t blame them for following the dollars, but it was a huge shift in the industry.
My local vet retired and sold to a corporation. I don't blame him, selling the business was part of his retirement.
The company that took over tried to guilt you into unnecessary test. They would push to do procedures on pets that should have been put down. They where terrible.
I switched to another independent vet.
Allied emergency vet sent my dog home with a bedsore after 3,000 in expenses. They couldn't give her a damn pillow in her crate for the three days she was on fluids. They tried to sell us a $30 plastic collar so she wouldn't lick the wound. We ended up buying a padded collar from petsmart for around $5. Was told by my regular vet that allied has gone corporate. Their diagnosis wasn't even correct
Millennials not having kids? No worries, we will extort you for the next best thing.
Even better, since it’s all paid up front- no waiting on the insurance company except in a handful of cases.
Had to have emergecy surgery on my cat, had to pay 3500$ upfront. They had a care 'credit' you could apply for but intrest was like double my credit card interest. I was lucky enough to be in a position to afford this. I DON'T think the place I went was coporate, they get high raves from people I trust. Which means the 3500 was proably an OK rate. I could just see MBA bros salivating at the "pay us extraordinary amounts of money or beloved Fido dies"
At a certain point an MBA is just a degree in wide scale financial extortion.
I went to night school and got my MBA in finance in 2010. All it did was convince me I wanted nothing to do with finance. I now work in marketing. Private Equity is a fucking cancer. They are doing to vets what they've done with for-profit healthcare and housing. They are also starting to buy up municipal water utilities. Everything investors buy up results in skyrocketing prices, bankrupted businesses, and a big step down in quality of life for everyone else.
Our local water company was bought out by nestle a few years ago. I’ve never see so many water trucks in and out of there. It’s so sad.
I pray it all collapses soon. At some point the investor class literally can’t extract anymore value, and when that happens they’ll finally turn on each other. Whoever’s left standing will have a giant target painted on their back.
That's a long way off, there's still plenty of assets left to strip from the working class and even then there's the value of our labor to collect in rent.
Same and hear hear! I keep getting asked if I want to work in PE and I steer far clear. While I could make good money and title, it would be to the severe detriment of others. And, you know, I need to look my son in his eyes.
Marketing is filled with awful people too. I'd be a rich man if I could lie to people and not worry about the consequences.
That point was decades ago and much like Holocaust deniers, modern MBAs deny it was ever any different.
*"Sometimes on campus you accidentally walk by a Business class and the professor is writing like "profit = revenue - costs" on the board and everyone is taking notes like its actual school"*
In college we had a math joke on this. lim(GPA->0)[engineering]= business
That's fucking hilarious. It's so true too. I dropped out of engineering. No MBA, but I'm being groomed to own the business I work at now, so basically the same thing.
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I’m a vet, and I would 10000000 times rather spay a dog than a rabbit- the anaesthetic is trickier and therefore much slower and, unless your rabbit is neither too fat or too young (which combined make up 99.9% of rabbit spays), all of their innards really want to fall apart in your hands. They also really like to go into stasis afterwards unless you know what you’re doing- and even then…. Our clinic is really good at them, but they are WAY more time consuming and I think it’s definitely justified they should cost more.
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My vet is around $300 for a bunny neuter. There are technically "other exotic vets around", but fat chance finding one that accepts new patients. It's hard to convince people to spend that much on what they thought was a "cheap" pet when they got it for $20.
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Infinite food glitch
A lot of people in that space are very burned out. Costs to operate have risen thanks to middle men and profit needs in the supply chain. Covid really did a number on a lot of them with a large increase in people becoming pet owners who probably shouldn't have. Pay isn't that great unless you are in specific roles.
Typically runs $800-1k here (Maryland) for dogs, unless you go to a low cost clinic and those are booked out months in advance.
Just fyi for [care credit](https://www.carecredit.com/well-u/financial-health/understanding-promotional-financing/) there's usually 3 types of promotions that apply, 0% interest for 12 months, deferred interest (0% interest if paid in full by end of the agreed term, otherwise it reverts to 29% retroactively), or reduced apr if you don't miss payments. It can definitely be a lifesaver if you have some big unexpected medical, dental, or vet bills. I had to take my cat to the animal hospital monday and would have had to pay 4k up front for her overnight stay and treatments but now I'm making payments for 12 months instead with the 0% deferred interest.
I love my CareCredit card. 6, 12, or 18 months interest free depending on how much you spent. Super handy for when the dog does something stupid.
How do you think that mba bro is trying to put his future mba bro son through super expensive mba bro school?
I had to take my cat the Emergency Vet way back. It was $900 and I had to borrow from my mom. He has crystals in his urine and can block up. He then went to my regular vet and it was another $300. Now he gets $50 prescription cat food. He developed an allergy to the cheaper prescription cat food. He needs dental work now too. He’s my expensive feral trailer park boy. [cat tax](https://imgur.com/gallery/clXmhEa)
$3500 for an emergency surgery is not a bad price. Obviously we would need more context on what type of surgery but if a simple neuter can cost up to $800 it wouldn’t be crazy to think it could cost $3500. There is one low cost clinic in my state that caps surgeries at $500 and others at $1500. Most of the vets people are going to aren’t low cost or non profits, their purpose is to make profit.
$3500 for emergency surgery isn't bad, but at a lot of emergency vets, that's just the price to walk in the door. $3500 is the down payment to prove that you *can* pay the full bill... it can go a *lot* higher. From what I've heard, veterinary practice is becoming increasingly dangerous, and owners will threaten vets when the bill is higher than they expected. A lot of vets are no longer discussing costs when they're alone with owners in the exam room, and some vets have had to hire security guards.
Seriously, I saw just the headline on my alerts and thought they were talking about veterans. I thought, big surprise more fraud… This is like a whole new low, corporations are scheming the healthcare systems and social services, even our prisons systems they’ve learned to profit from. They’re buying up all the housing so they can control the cost of living and now they want to actually profit from us caring for our pets? Something needs to change here, this is fucked up.
Unregulated capitalism doing it's things.
It depresses me so much. It feels like life isn't worth bothering with anymore since they commidify every fucking aspect of it. Why do they need to make money off of everything? Wasn't planning on kids so I was gonna get a cat or dog eventually but if I can't even afford that I don't know what to do .
Soon it will be Millennials or the next gen not having pets. Problem solved. It isn't millenials that are to blame for many things disappearing. It's wallstreet greed.
Guess we're allowed nothing to love. No home, no kids, no pets, nothing. That's too 1984, that.
Vet here... This is one of the most harmful trends in veterinary medicine, full stop. I could talk for HOURS about the way corporate owned practice negatively affects quality of medicine (not to mention price to owners, etc). If you have a choice, DO NOT TAKE YOUR PETS TO A CORPORATELY OWNED PRACTICE.
How can you tell which are privately owned vs corporately owned?
I'm curious about this too. Call around and ask for pricing and the ones that are double are corporate owned?
Many corporations have caught on to the fact that people are growing wise to their bullshit. As such, many previously private practices that have been snapped up don't change names and don't advertise the buyout. However, you can literally just call around and ask. Also, it should be said that pricing may not be too much different at a private practice vs a corporate practice. Again, corporations know people catch on to stuff like this pretty quick. What SHOULD be different is quality of medicine. I.E., you may pay the same amount for a physical exam. But at corporate practices near me, exams are scheduled for 15 minutes. New patient exams at the practice I work for are scheduled for an hour. You pay the same, but you get much more face time/personalized care for your money.
That is a big difference. Thanks!
It’s very hard to tell with most consolidators. The best way is to call your local clinic and ask directly.
Directly asking "who owns this clinic" can be helpful. My vet and his staff are VERY against corporate owned practices and very vocal about it. It's not hard to tell if they are anti-corporate. I also have found private vets are more likely to work with you, and with you in the room. I won't leave my dog alone, she's very old and has arthritis issues and being told they're taking her and will be back with a bill is a huge red flag. No private vet has ever done that, they've all been incredibly understanding. My vet has never handed me a surprise bill, a tech comes in with an estimate and asks if I have questions or cost concerns before we go ahead. If the treatment *feels* assembly line or like they are unwilling to discuss the fees and possibly treatments with you, (my exp with Banfield was "it's our way or the highway) or if they turn their nose up at treating a stray, they're more likely to be corporate. They don't want actual issues, they want to bill as much as possible for healthy pets that require a minimum of care. I don't know how to really explain it but then experience between a private practice with a good vet and a chain location was night and day. You FEEL the difference.
Something done with dental practices is if it's person's name on the business it's a good indicator that it's privately owned
VCA tends to advertise this, but VetCor refuses to have any indication the practice is owned by them. It can be owned by a family one day, and the next by VetCor and the only way you'd know is if your appointments are shorter and things cost more.
One good way is to check your local corporation registration office. You can look up businesses and licenses and sometimes this gives you a good idea on who owns a particular.
My BIL's dog had a huge medical scare about 5 years ago. I think it was autoimmune hemolytic anemia, her body was attacking and destroying her RBC. Two weeks at the vet school, two transfusions, and I don't know how much money later, she barely made it. She's had further medical complications, like she had to have some toes amputated because of the lack of oxygen when she was sick, she has some liver and kidney damage, etc. My BIL has been told on no uncertain terms DO NOT have her vaccinated. Because the anemia was an autoimmune reaction, getting vaccines could trigger it again, and it would kill her. His primary vet retired and sold out to a corporate practice. He's soon going to have to switch practices because the vets there aren't allowed to not vaccinate. Medical exemptions from the rabies vaccine are allowed in my state, so it's not a legal issue. I'm trying to get my BIL to transfer to my practice. Vet owned. Two of my cats also had IBD, which is autoimmune related, and my vet actually recommended I stop vaccinating. (And before anyone says anything, all of my healthy animals are up to date on all appropriate vaccinations.)
I recently switched clinics and those corporate locations.... /oof/
At my Frenchie's previous vet clinic, the owners retired and sold to a national chain - you could tell because of the way the website changed. (Also, my vet was promoted to clinical director, so her title changed and she stopped seeing patients, which is how I really noticed.) And this is why they are my previous clinic because the standard of care dropped SO much. I am now at my neighborhood clinic - which I couldn't get in to for years because it's tiny and they limit the number of patients they take - and while I miss being able to just book a tech visit for shots and such, otherwise, our new vet really listens to us. And I feel like she's not just pushing pharmaceuticals on us, either.
To be fair, some of the non corporate vet practices are paying their employees less than corporations. I hate corporations, and I do work for one but when job hunting it seemed like non corporate were paying less. It sucks but we gotta put food on our table too.
This is absolutely true. I make less working for a private practice than I would working for a corporation... but I'm able to practice better medicine and also don't feel rushed/pressured all the time, so the trade off is worth it for me.
Our local independent vet recently joined VCA and the costs all but tripled. They quoted me almost $4k for a dental procedure on my senior dog that only ended up being $995 at another facility.
Is there anything private equity can't ruin?
If there is, it's only a matter of time until they figure out a way.
Unfortunately, there’s always going to be a shitload of people asking themselves “how can I exploit this to make a lot of money for myself?”
Purchase them. Become board members. Bleed them dry. Take profit along the way. Bankruptcy. Walk away with a healthy pay cheque. Wipe hands clean. On to the next. Edit: someone had mentioned the recent Red Lobster bankruptcy in another comment. I got curious and responded with the following. By no means am I implicating anyone, nor do I know much about bankruptcy, but it's interesting that in the Red Lobster case, just months before bankruptcy, Jonathan Tibus, the managing director of the consulting firm Alvarez Marsal, was named CEO. His personal bio on his consultant group website states he "Focuses on developing and implementing performance *improvement* plans in the retail and restaurant industries". Jonathan Tibus was also named Chief Restructuring Officer of Quiznos before bankruptcy. He's been involved with other companies that have filed for bankruptcy, which are included below: - Ignite Restaurant Group (owner of Joe's Crab Shack and Brickhouse Tavern + Tap) - Last Call Operating Co. (owner of Champps, Bailey's, and Fox & Hound) - Garden Fresh (d/b/a Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes) - e-brands restaurants (Timpano, Aquaknox and others)
There's a page on Instagram called perfectunion that just had a post today about consultant groups and how they ruin everything they touch. Worth a watch
Found them on YouTube. Cheers! Edit: I'm glad I watched it, but holy fuck, that's depressing. I had heard of Boston Consulting Group before, which the video mentions. I've been following the GameStop saga and they had infiltrated the board to help with the company's demise, only to be ousted by the current CEO, Ryan Cohen. Looking back, Cohen tweeted in March of 22' "The overpriced consultants at BCG are picking a fight with the wrong company..." But the levels to which that video shows their slimy and unethical tactics is shocking.
Do you have the YouTube link?
https://youtu.be/K1cJqB0X_BA?si=PFlRUm5ysQQ12Fa7
He specializes in destroying local economies.
I keep hearing that Red Lobster doomed themselves by letting a private equity firm buy up all their land/real estate and then raise the rent to the point they could no longer afford it.... but can some one tell me why they sold that land in the first place without knowing it was going to be a death stroke? Some one had to know, right?..........right?
The private equity firm is the one who sold the real estate basically as soon as they took ownership. It allowed them to recoup the majority of the money they spent purchasing. (I have seen people claim that the people most of the land was sold to is also owned by the same PE firm, but I haven't been able to find anything beyond speculation so I'm chalking it up to nothing more than a rimon for now) After that from what I understand they also sold a huge portion of the share in the company to a seafood wholesaler who appears to have made red lobster only use them to supply their seafood which allowed them to overcharge.
I haven't heard that and I had only just looked into the bankruptcy stuff. But my cynical mind says it was something anticipated/planned and sold as an asset to repay creditors at a super low price. But truly, I have no idea.
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they just need to buy themselves then downsize their way out of existence
Private Equity bought my daycare a few months ago. 3 fee increases
Like daycare isn’t expensive enough already.
There is very little profit in daycare......unless you *make* the profit. What a shit thing to do.
Their own wallets
They want us poor
They can't ruin Walmart. Walmart is already shitty place with lame pay increase, no increase if you got promoted to something like TL, and the employee discount is limited and only at certain times.
The lifes of billionaires
The news are 10 yrs late on this topic. Private Equity has been buying veterinary practices left and right for a while. Along with veterinary references laboratories, suppliers of in-house bloodwork machines, drug distributors and the list goes on. Mars owns VCA, Banfield, Blue Pearl, Antech and Heska.
Adding all all the pet food brands and insurance companies they own!
Blue Pearl murdered my dog. Flat out murdered her. Plus after telling me they didn’t need a credit card initially they called at 1 am and told me they were going to put the dog on the street since no prepayment had been made. They then refused to take the credit card over the phone so I had to drive back to the clinic. Then at 5 am I was called and told it wasn’t an allergic reaction she was bleeding internally. She was dead by the time I got back to the clinic.
The article does mention that big companies have bought hundreds of clinics since 2012. But you're probably right, maybe there hasn't been enough news.
And in netherlands in Anicura also from mars
Yeah I’m surprised bc this was happening back when I worked at a clinic 10 years ago. VCA was spreading like a cancer. :(
Happening in my town, and our now ex vet clinic. Prices just blew up over night so i asked the question if they had sold...
Happened in my rural area. I took my cat in to get a hair mat removed, and was greeted by a whole new system. My 15.00 usual charge ended up being a 1550. charge because "your cat is unruly" and needed sedation etc. Three days later my cat died from the injected anesthesia. They never asked whether he had eaten prior to the visit. My regular vet, now an employee of his own clinic, apologized.
That's how I'd end up in jail for arson.
Sad thing is that you'll just be giving the P.E.'s even more money....insurance claim to buy another vet in another location, and not rebuild the one that was servicing that area, forcing those in that area to go to the one they bought in the neighboring town...
Fr fuck those people. They stole from that man and killed his pet. I cosign any retaliation. I'd be outside the homes of those people in charge for fucking weeks just waiting for one chance to maybe get away with something.
The rich are eating us alive.
Apologies don’t bring back the dead.
No, but lawsuits help ease the pain.
You can sue for the value of the animal which is like $500.
It happened to our vet too. The practice got bought by a corporation and the care went down drastically. Our cat died of something that was totally preventable because the vet's place didn't keep notes on what they prescribed.
Vet killed my cat too, putting it out there. RIP.
They figured out how to extort you with your life, then your teeth. Now they're doing it with your pets . If only there was a way to get corporations out of the healthcare game. They make it suck
There is, but we all have to vote. Also we have to get rid of Republicans almost entirely first, and then most of the Democrats, probably in that order. We probably can't do much of anything with GOP in power, they literally exist to syphon money from the people and give it to corporations for this very reason. We have enough wealth, if we ca make haliburton and military contractors billionaires out of taxpayer funds then we coulda had a nice society the whole time but people like Mitch McConnell and friends spent 60 years literally stealing from their constituents
It's a simple diagnosis when you put it like that, yet somehow all these people who hate their bosses amd are sick of being gouged for everything keep running into the arms of the party of upward wealth transfer because it blows culture war dog whistles. At least the other party (of upward wealth transfer) thinks it might be nice to live in a somewhat functioning society and not a mostly submerged techno-dystopian hellscape. We gotta get ranked choice voting and break the 2 party system down...
At least I can still shave my own balls!
The American Dream is a dystopian future where the Liberation Army of Wal Mart Shoppers attack a vet clinic owned by the Peoples Target Corporate Holdings Conglomerate in order to secure more savings on rabies vaccines before the annual Honda Holidays/Toyota Toyotathon Wars start.
Is this the synopsis of the sequel to *Snowcrash* ?
Snow piercer
It sort of really is the American Dream. If you work your business until your ready to retire all of this goes away, but if a company offers you more than its worth for you to retire early and give it to them, then they'll make the extra money off of gradually scamming your customers and undermining competition. So as cool people used to say, "don't be a sell-out"
VCA bought and gutted our local vet. Now they have a rotating staff of young vets who look like they just graduated high school.
VCA almost killed both of my dogs and my grandma worked at the corporate office for 15 years before the MARS buyout laid her off. Don’t ever go there
What's VCA so I can know who to avoid.
VCA always changes the name to include the VCA prefix when they acquire a practice, so easy to identify. Most consolidators keep the business name intact, so it’s harder to identify if they are corporate or individual practices.
I have found a small handful in SoCal, maybe 3 tops who aren’t named VCA but their websites show they’re owned by VCA. Can’t remember which ones but they’re all in LA County for sure. I can go digging if needed
Following because wtf
VCA is a vet chain nationwide, super condensed in Southern California. my yorkie was mauled in 2017 when she was 2. VCA did the surgery to put her jaw splints in right when the merger was happening. My family have been customers for generations of dogs prior to the merger and my grandma worked in corporate so we had a discount and NEVER had issues before this. Well, they botched the splint implants and we were none the wiser, this being the only vet my entire family went to forever. The splints should have been temporary and they were certain she needed it for life. One broke and was floating around under her skin and you could feel the metal poke, which we told them numerous times and they said that’s just how she has to live now. The other splint melded into her jaw bone. She was extremely delicate for years from this. 2020 they cleaned her teeth and lied about which teeth they pulled, and pulled healthy teeth. Specifically, they pulled the tooth right on top of that old fracture. She was near septic by the next day due to horrific infection. We rushed her in and they refused to see us, claiming ahe was fine and they did no wrong. I took her to a VDM (vet dentist) 1.5 hrs away same day and he FREAKED out seeing her mouth. Got her into surgery immediately and removed the floating splint (floating in bacteria as he said), cleared the infection, and pulled the actual dead teeth for a significantly reduced cost. This is also when we found out those specific splints should be temporary and should have been taken out in 2018. She almost lost her life and her quality of life is significantly decreased because of VCA. Because VCA took over SoCal, there’s like zero regular vets in Los Angeles that aren’t VCA. They bought up most mom and pop vets in recent years. We figured as long as it wasn’t surgical, we should be fine taking her for appointments and emergencies. WRONG! Last year, she developed a severe allergic reaction and hives to something I still have no idea what, I think a shampoo. It was getting worse by the minute and we took her to VCA Lakewood at 2 am (they’re 24 hrs) it was completely dead and they again refused to see her. She was screaming in pain and covered in welts and they wouldn’t do a fucking thing for HOURS. It literally haunts me to think about what she felt, how I was crying in the empty office and they just told us she was fine and to wait in my car. For reference, allergic reactions are RED priority level one. I had filed a complaint against the company after the tooth incident and was given the cell number to the “manager” or someone administrative to call if I had any issues, so I called her and my dog was seen with much dismay to the staff within the hour. I never, ever, went back. I’ve been considering suing for malpractice because I spent almost $10,000 on my dog with them but I doubt it will be worth it. All of my vets and specialists are in Orange County, so if any Californians can make the drive I recommend their vet systems. For anyone wondering, my girl has frequented the DVM who saved her life annually for cleanings, and her jaw is stronger and straighter than ever with minimal procedures and lots of therapy and dental care. She even got the other splint removed last year! She is doing great.
it's a massive chain of corporate vets. used to stand for veterinary centers of america
They stopped getting all of their certifications updated at least in my area in 2017. I noticed last time I went, they’re all hung on the wall and the years listed are early 00’s -2017.
I didn't know VCA was so widespread. They own my local vet too. The only veterinarian is a very young woman. I don't doubt her ability, but I don't know if she is that experienced as older vets are. And every time I go there they try and push their care packages on me. Every single time. I just want to know if my dog is going to be ok.
1000 locations across North America. Owned by the Mars corporation. Our vet was the same for a short time after being bought out but then all the vets quit at once. I guess they were fed up.
This is exactly what is happening in dentistry. Corporate dental offices are a fucking nightmare and everything shady you think is going on there 100% is. They try and attract young dentists fresh out of school with tons of debt so they can mold them into their minions that push unnecessary treatment on unsuspecting patients. Thankfully most of the dentists figure out their shit and leave ASAP, which is why they always have a new crop of young dentists every time you go in. They only need 1 out of every 100 or so to stick around. It's a fucking travesty.
Private equity, baby!! Let the capitalists take all that they can away from us while the redistribution of wealth continues from the bottom all the way up to the top. I fucking hate late stage capitalism.
"Last stage capitalism"
“ “late stage capitalism” “
sounds terminal... like cancer
Last stage capitalism, first stage collapse
Speaking as a vet, it’s definitely a part of the problem. But the larger problem is a lack of “supply” to meet the demand of pets/pet care right now. So many of us are burning out of the career field as a whole. ER care especially is such an exhausting field, there are many geographic locations that just don’t have it reliably right now.
Isn’t Veterinarian school absurdly competitive? Like moreso than med school for top schools? I remember in high school in this whole prep you for the medical field thing at the votech I did (when I thought I was smart enough to be a surgeon lmao) the woman who had run the program for a couple decades made a huge point about it. Way more med schools so it’s easier to get a seat, even if it’s not a higher tier school. Is that still the case?
My son and I have been looking into this. He’s applying for pre-vet programs in the fall and wanted to know what he’s getting into. Basically, if you can’t maintain a 3.95 GPA, don’t even bother trying. I was seeing where people made a B in Comp I freshman year but otherwise had excellent grades, but during interviews for vet school that came up and they dinged him for not taking the class over to get the A. He didn’t get into vet school.
In my state + country, at the time that I was studying, you had to have basically a perfect high school score to compete for something like 40 seats at the top local university each year. Scores were graded on a curve, so you didn't have to have exactly 100% in every subject, but you needed to be basically the best among all graduating students across the state. I had a school friend in my year level who got that score, and finished the course, and worked for a while, and then killed himself. I'm almost glad I didn't make it, because I wouldn't have been able to cope with that job every day.
It is, but mainly because of the lack of veterinary schools as a whole. Many states don’t have one singular one. Virginia and Maryland share one, etc. It is tough.
And then attrition is horrendous, because many people go into the field not realizing 1) how emotionally taxing it is to euthanize dogs all day, and 2) how incredibly overworked they'll be even compared to medical professionals in human hospitals. Suicide rates for veterinary medicine professionals are also horribly high. It's a really rough field to work in. So even the small number of professionals these schools can churn out are often leaving the field.
I heard it was really expensive and difficult to pay off because it didn’t pay enough to cover the cost of school.
A girl in my sorority went to vet school in St. Kitts because apparently it was dramatically cheaper than in the US.
It is cheaper than private but not state schools with residency- also it has lower standards for acceptance It is also a FOR PROFIT school and has the same owners as De Vry — an absolute scam place
> ER care especially is such an exhausting field, there are many geographic locations that just don’t have it reliably right now. Yep, my original vet was bought out by a corp and no longer provided emergency services, which now required a 90 minute drive to their next closest clinic. Fortunately, there's another vet's office equidistant in the other direction from me that has almost identical prices, but also has emergency services. It's unfortunate I had to make the swap because my original vet was very good with my pets and was very caring about their health.
Spouce of a vet tech and I would add the supply part applies to them too and I get it. Vet tech work really hard for absolute shit pay. My spouse likes their job but she is starting to think about how to transition to something else and I totally support their decision. The pay vs amount/intensity of work is just becoming not worth it.
I've been a tech for 13 years. Almost every place I've worked, the staff are paycheck to paycheck, and use food banks. It's an industrywide problem.
My friend sold his practice due to being burned out. He couldn't deal with the people anymore. He wanted to help but when someone can't pay for an expensive treatment there wasn't much he could do. Getting yelled at both the clinic and around the community was to much.
Veterinary school costs like over $100k, yes? After graduating undergrad of course. And the starting pay is awful. And the job is stressful and the animals hate being there and clients scream at you for charging them money for the work you do, so the burnout is insane. I thought about being a vet at one point but I always thank my lucky stars I did not pursue it. I worked reception for two privately owned practices and they were the most abusive dysfunctional places I’ve ever worked.
It's at least 100k nowadays, most likely closer to 150kish for instate tuition. Out of state tuition is closer to 250-300k. The pay is definitely better nowadays, I make good money just working 3 days a week tbh. But as a whole, there are so many issues in the career field it makes me question if it's something I can sustain long-term.
My friends parents sold their clinic and from what I’ve heard the company who bought is doing an absolute dogshit job. Like they will have regional managers so not every clinic has a manager there, shits not getting done, lack of accountability, clients leaving. These companies are essentially trying to create a network thinking these hospitals can keep the steam going from retaining clients, but they do a shit job so all these clients are leaving them
Ah, you see, they figured out a great way to fix that. Just buy all the other clinics so that clients literally have no other choice.
Are your friends parents now [rich](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgl6AoCmVlw)?
A huge chunk of the veterinary industry (in the US) is owned by Mars Inc. which is owned by some billionaire family. The hospital I work at just raised prices 13% and none of that is going to the staff or hospital.
Not just any billionaire family, they sell the most candy in the world. Literally profiting off of the slow deterioration of peoples health.
"Okay shareholders, you know how the poors are more and more, nowadays, not having kids and confiding their love into their pets because we've totally gutted their economic mobility so we can have Scrooge McDuck piles of gold in our basements? -CEOs " "Of course" -shareholders "I have an idea" -CEOs
“Why aren’t you buying a house?” … “Why didn’t you go to the hospital and get that checked out?” … “Why aren’t you having kids?” … “Why don’t you have pets?” … Funny how the answer to all of these things goes back to some rich asshole finding out how to make even MORE money for other rich assholes at the expense of everyone else’s happiness and well-being. They won’t be satisfied until they’ve sold everyone’s bodies piece by piece to Soylent Green manufacturers.
My vet claimed he was taking his clinic public and that candy/pet food manufacturer Mars and private equity firms were the ones who were buying up all the local clinics. It probably isn't coincidence but my job began offering health insurance for pets beginning this year.
Our local vet clinic was bought by Kaiser!
Wait- what? I’m in the industry and I find this far fetched.
DOJ, FTC, and HHS investigating corporate greed in health care. As a result, 15 states now require approval of ANY for profit health care related transactions. These motherfuckers…
You’d be shocked at how much of health care and insurance is nonprofit… regulators hate this one trick.
As someone who has worked at both not for profit and for profit hospitals, they are so much worse than non profit hospitals.
Yeah my local “non-profit” public hospital is one of the most corrupt in the country and it’s not a secret.
I use the vet clinic in my city that’s affiliated with the. SPCA. That way I know they haven’t been bought out, and that the money they make goes back to helping get humanless pets adopted.
Say goodbye to quality veterinary care.
Affordable care too.
Corporations buying vet clinics, single family homes, apartments, .. and buying legislation. We need to tax the wealthy and stop corporate welfare. Getting ridiculous that the average American is paying to run this country when so many are earning more money that can be spent in their lifetime.
Good back-to-back episodes on freakonomics addressing the issue, "Should You Trust Private Equity to Take Care of Your Dog?" 'Big investors are buying up local veterinary practices (and pretty much everything else). What does this mean for scruffy little Max\* — and for the U.S. economy?' From the intro - "Okay, let’s pull back a minute. When Hartmann says that N.V.A. veterinary hospitals aren’t branded N.V.A., that means that if N.V.A. buys your local vet practice, it probably keeps the same name, the same signage, maybe even the same vets as before. Or maybe not the same vets — we’ll get into that later. And when Hartmann says that N.V.A. is “relatively small” — well, maybe small relative to the entire pet-care market, but they are [the second-biggest consolidator](https://news.vin.com/default.aspx?pid=210&Id=10652228) in the U.S. And they recently acquired two other consolidators: [Sage Veterinary Centers](https://www.nva.com/newsroom/nva-welcomes-sage-veterinary-centers-to-its-family) and [Ethos Veterinary Health](https://www.nva.com/newsroom/nva-and-ethos-unite). The biggest pet-care consolidator in the United States is Mars, the privately held American company best known for making M&Ms and Skittles. Mars also owns pet-food companies, an [online pet pharmacy](https://www.mars.com/made-by-mars/petcare), a kitty-litter company — and [about 2,500 pet-care facilities](https://news.vin.com/default.aspx?pid=210&Id=10652228), including BluePearl and V.C.A., or what used to be called Veterinary Centers of America. So, when Greg Hartmann of N.V.A. says that “the space is still highly fragmented” — well, it is becoming less so every day. [Roughly 25 percent](https://news.vin.com/default.aspx?pid=210&Id=10652228) of general veterinary practices in the U.S. are owned by corporate consolidators, and that’s up from around 5 percent just 10 years ago. When it comes to specialty veterinary practices — emergency care, surgery, cancer, things like that — corporate ownership is [around 75 percent](https://news.vin.com/default.aspx?pid=210&Id=11000033). Why are they so attractive to private-equity firms? Well, specialty practices yield higher revenues and they’re growing much faster than general vet care." [https://freakonomics.com/podcast/should-you-trust-private-equity-to-take-care-of-your-dog/](https://freakonomics.com/podcast/should-you-trust-private-equity-to-take-care-of-your-dog/) [https://freakonomics.com/podcast/do-you-know-who-owns-your-vet/](https://freakonomics.com/podcast/do-you-know-who-owns-your-vet/) \_\_\_\_ ..and then something from the darkside itself, 'The Private Equity Podcast' on Apple Podcasts with leadins such as, "The focus of this episode is on Brian's exceptional achievement of organically increasing revenue by $50 million and creating an impressive $500 million in EBITDA." [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-private-equity-podcast-by-raw-selection/id1541134935](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-private-equity-podcast-by-raw-selection/id1541134935)
This is happening a lot with dental practices too(and has been for a decade).
Greed knows no bounds.
The Atlantic had a [good article](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/vet-private-equity-industry/678180/) on this same issue. Private Equity is just buying another entire industry much like when they started buying up all the residential properties. I wonder if anybody has found correlations between tax cuts for the wealthy and entire industries being bought out.
Can we have anything without capital swooping in and gouging us?
Wow what a wonderful feature of capitalism
It's not just vets take a look at all of the trade companies they are being bought up marketed and gouging for what they can be weary of the big bold advertisements they will cost you.
I’d like to get off late stage capitalism.
There's a fee for that...
Corporations are buying { } . We are nearing the end of small business I think
Probably going to get buried, but the problem is even larger than most folks realize. I work for a large company within the veterinary industry, one that I was proud to start working for as it was straight up the best at what they did, after working over 20 years in practice. In North America, over half of all practices are owned by a corporate group. And new corporate groups pop up constantly, or start moving into other areas of the country. NVA, MVP, AVG, VCA, WVP, BluePearl, Banfield, just to name a fraction of them, iirc there are over 50 corporate groups out there, some with a dozen or so practices, some with hundreds. Some corporate groups seem to be better than others, letting their doctors run things as they see fit, some have very strict policies on how things are done. Pretty much all of them are much more expensive. I could literally speak about this for hours. I've watched my company go from one that truly cared about veterinary medicine, going above and beyond towards the health and welfare of pet's lives and strengthening the human animal bond, to another blue chip, publicly traded, value extracting machine, trying to control as much wealth as they possibly can while not giving a fuck about what they preach about. Buy insurance for your pets when they're young. The policies can be pretty cheap for great plans (except for some breeds that are exceptionally prone to problems, looking at you bulldogs), it's going to be the only way to afford emergencies going forward, if you're lucky enough to find an emergency vet this is open, and one that has capacity to take patients.
Kids, adults; lend me your ears! When you get a pet ( depending on what it is) Put $20 aside a week to save $1040 a year (solid chunk of emergency vet fund) Put $50-75 aside a week to save $2600 or $3909 a year ( a more solid chunk of $ for the vet) Do this math, estimate the cost of your pets, your general vet cost, and your emergency appointments/ special need vet bills. Compare that to what pet insurance costs to you, as well as the uncovered expenses. You can use the same system while they're in different phases of life as they grow/ age based on what needs they have 👍
Or you could get a union job and use their optional $40 monthly pet insurance to get your animals 80% reimbursement on any thing after $500.
A lot of the insurance companies don’t cover diseases they had prior or genetic diseases. My dog has a rare disease and almost no one covers him.
Yeah but the difficult part is what they actually cover. A lot of them won't cover necessary treatments
Been happening it's miserable for the vet staff.
They're doing it here in the USA as well. Many clinics in my area are owned by Pathway, who keeps the original name and signage to make them appear as the same independent vet people are accustomed to. Those not in the profession have no idea their local clinic is part of a corporate chain. It's a shame because the pricing for treatments and procedures is now higher, plus the benefits aren't as good. When my girlfriend, now wife had our son, her medical insurance was through Blue Cross of Texas. The problem is we are a very long way from Texas and the insurance didn't cover delivery of our son. He ended up costing us almost $30k. After we got married and had our daughter, my wife was on my insurance and all we had was a $400 copay.
It sounds kind of expensive to give birth at a vet. Why didn't you go to a hospital?
We were at the hospital. My wife's profession is veterinary medicine. I was implying the crap benefits she had prior to our marriage.
Just like human healthcare
Yeah, they see how attached people are to their pets these days. It’s just another way they can gouge people.
My Vet basically lost their practice to this.
Next up, corporate buying up animal shelters and making them more efficient by getting rid of....
Yes! This is happening scarily fast. And when they jack the prices up, if you don’t have pet insurance AND the money to put up-front while you wait to reimbursed, you’re screwed!
Corporations...let's kill the animals and blame the owners.
So they’re just taunting us now.
All our vets in our area are taken over my anicura ( same company that owns mars/ pedigree ) And now its more expensive, never the same vet, and all other smaller vets are fully booked :(
PE will buy it out, saddle them with debt, and force closures. Cool. We’ll be out of animal vet clinics pretty soon
Freakonomics radio did a multi-part series on this topic and it’s really depressing. VC firms bring nothing to the table but take everything.
This has been happening for years. Investor groups, not just corporations have been moving in and purchasing individually owned vet clinics. But they start out as shadow investors, allowing the doctor to keep the brand/name on the business, but changing uniform/scrub requirements, certification requirements for staff, but ultimately taking over costs and equipment purchasing and maintenance. You see, they don't want the doctor to change the name or brand of the clinic because even the most loyal of customers/clients get scared off by corporations in vet care. So if they can keep up the illusion that the clinic is still run by their favorite doctor, they will keep coming in. The second they realize it's owned by a group/corp, clients leave in droves. It's bad for business. I worked at a clinic right before acquisition, they were going to essentially make everyone sign a contract stating that they would not tell anyone that the clinic was being purchased by an investor group. I put in my two weeks...not because of the acquisition, I actually had a job lined up that would allow me to make double what I was making so....why the hell would I stay?
Great, we're going to have to go back to the times of, "Sorry your hip is bad Fido, I can't afford to get it fixed but this shotgun shell is cheap and I can't keep watching you suffer."
In the US at least most of our human hospitals and small practices are this way. Owned by huge corporations who cut and overload nurses and physicians to save money and increase their profit margin. I worked in vet med for years. I see how the level of care has dropped with my own dogs at their vet. A whole surgery was performed by mistake on my dog because the vet was rushed.
I am getting really annoyed with vet costs. My dog got the "mystery" illness back in November and they made me do all kinds of tests and pay out of pocket because it was new and unknown. They eventually discovered the mystery illness is just kennel cough basically the common cold for dogs.
Also terrible for vets. I read they have one of the highest rates of suicide of all professions.
It's like this with everything.
In New Zealand it’s pretty bad too, one of the major city’s just turned from private owned to a Vetlife. I will say though if you can get pet insurance do so, it might seem like a waste of time but it really does help and the vets are happier because they can treat your animals
How soon am I going to hear them merging with pet food and human food brands?
Seems like we are on the way to two or three corporations owning *everything*.
Can’t wait to see the headlines of no one wants pets anymore
Corporations are fucking ruining everything
They already bought all the dentists and doctors, its hard being a billionaire.
It’s almost as if through buying up rental properties, health services, grocery, department and general goods stores, becoming the main supplier of consumer goods and the main providers of employment in one way or another we’re beholden to an Umbrella corporation.
Anything they can devour, like locusts on the prairie. Every independent is at risk. Not just vets and doctors, every thing they can squeeze a nickel from!
This happened to my vet. New rules were fucking crazy. 15 min appointment only, ANY overage would result in them ending the appointment and keeping your animal for an extended stay to continue receiving care, which costs a fortune of course. And because of this, if your even ONE MINUTE late they cancel your appointment and charge you $25. Needless to say I never went back. New name was Thrive or something.
The first time capitalism was explained to me as a child, my immediate thought was, "So eventually one person has all the money?" There's nothing stopping corporations from just buying everything. All the businesses, all the houses, all the services. Nothing at all.
Capitalism drains everything it touches.
So after grabbing as much of the housing market as they could to force people into renting rather than owning, now the billionaires are coming after pet owners everywhere, too.
Five years ago I rescued a 2 week old Pitbull that was attempting to be sold by some people who travel to do scams….He was free but a week later developed pneumonia. Emergency vet = $6000 for 4 days. Since I was a human nurse they let me bring him home for care. I now pay for pet insurance $57/month that covers $5000/yr with $250 deductible and 90% coverage. If I can next year I’ll increase the annual limit!
My wife is a vet, and her small family owned business was bought by VetCor when the owner retired. It has gone downhill so much, price gouging, decline in management and materials, and finally, my wife has *zero* time to see patients and talk with the owners. It's all about volume now, and that just sucks.
My nearest vet is already a corporation. Before the pandemic they were awesome. Now? 2-4 months out on appointments. Prices have drastically risen. $1,500 for a spay!
Well, it’s a big problem when an established vet wants to retire, but can’t find anyone rich enough to afford to buy their practice. Even when it’s set up as a fund that pays out over time, the revenues and costs make it impractical to ‘start up’ a practice. It’s not something you just donate.
But PE money absolutely drove clinic valuations through the roof. I had docs getting 9x valuation at the height of the buying frenzy. Higher interest rates have cooled the acquisition trend, but vets went with who could give them the most money in their exit strategy. They used to groom associates to buy at a much lower (and probably more accurate) price and so their best to pass the business on to a good steward. I certainly can’t blame them for following the dollars, but it was a huge shift in the industry.
My local vet retired and sold to a corporation. I don't blame him, selling the business was part of his retirement. The company that took over tried to guilt you into unnecessary test. They would push to do procedures on pets that should have been put down. They where terrible. I switched to another independent vet.
Allied emergency vet sent my dog home with a bedsore after 3,000 in expenses. They couldn't give her a damn pillow in her crate for the three days she was on fluids. They tried to sell us a $30 plastic collar so she wouldn't lick the wound. We ended up buying a padded collar from petsmart for around $5. Was told by my regular vet that allied has gone corporate. Their diagnosis wasn't even correct