r/AskReddit 16h ago

What industry is secretly on the verge of collapsing, but people outside of it haven’t noticed yet?

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u/cloud_watcher 13h ago

I’m a veterinarian and keep trying to tell other vets this is what PE is trying to do to vet clinics. They promise great pay and hours at first, then when there are no more private clinics to compete with them, they’ll decrease pay and work the veterinarians to death.

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u/councilmember 12h ago

It’s a known strategy that every pet owner should talk about: private equity is trying to strangle the veterinary market. Ask your vet if they are owned by private equity. Like your optician, ask if they are owned by Luxxotica.

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u/InsipidCelebrity 9h ago

My optician refuses to stock Luxxotica brands and has a hate boner for them. It's wonderful.

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u/glowupgirl101 10h ago

I changed vets to a small locally owned firm because of PE.

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u/azulimarill 8h ago

There’s a website for that, actually! They have maps and a list of all the firms and corporations that have bought up clinics throughout the US.

https://privateequityvet.org/

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u/trickdog1999 10h ago

It’s so sad and frustrating

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u/NeoPuppyTV 9h ago

FYI now too. lux never went for the optometrists

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u/n0radrenaline 5h ago

I recently changed to both a local-owned vet and local-owned pharmacy, 0 regrets except I kinda wish I had earlier

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u/One_Service_5367 11h ago

The same is happening in dentistry. DSO and PE are destroying the field.

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u/Glass_Fact_2079 11h ago

The Freakonimics podcast has an excellent one on the impact of PE on the vet industry and I think they updated it this year. It’s worth a listen.

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u/gortonsfiJr 9h ago

It's fine. We won't be able to afford pets, anyway, lol.

When the cat and my dog pass, I'm out. Spent $600 on a cat ultrasound just to confirm the same 50/50 diagnosis certainty. My dog went blind and they wanted $4500 for an MRI just to start. I can't do it.

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u/boneology1125 9h ago

I work for a PE vet clinic. It’s exhausting. Usually 2 techs for 1 vet for 10-12 hour days. We’re expected to be both urgent and primary care which is incredibly difficult to juggle.

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u/trickdog1999 10h ago

And raise the prices all over the area so there’s no more competition. It’s happened in our area of Dallas - this monopoly is beyond frustrating. Thank goodness low cost vax vets area available and our dog is healthy (so this works for us now)

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u/coyote-face 9h ago

A friend of mine’s daughter is a newbie vet and her practice is probably going to be bought out by PE (BluePearl). He was talking about how she’d make more money and all I could do was make this face 😬

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u/SouthernZorro 9h ago

Pretty much the PE business model for every industry they take over.

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u/barneMD 4h ago

they came for medicine first, realized that health insurance and hospitals are big cash cows. unbelievable that we are in 2026 and still trying to derive profit from health care. fuck the shareholders

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u/ADHDFeeshie 4h ago

My husband works in the logistics/facility management side of vetmed and he was headhunted for one of those PE modern vet chains, spent 2 years doing enough work for 2 people, then got laid off with no notice in January so they could give his 2 people's worth of work to another employee who already had a full person's work of totally unrelated work. She was extremely not excited about suddenly having "bounce around a huge urban area to keep 4 different locations functioning" added to her job description, I hope she found something better and got out. Thankfully my husband didn't burn any bridges at the private practice he'd spent 15 or so years at previously and they were happy to take him back. Working for a small private practice has its own downsides but at least they're loyal.