alt Hacker NewsIt's actually worse with veterinary practices.
Younger veterinarians are drowning in school debt and can't buy the practices from the older folks that are retiring. So, private equity is basically snatching all of them up right now, betting that childless millennials are going to pay tons of money on veterinary care when their pandemic pups begin to reach end-of-life.
They're going to cut wages for all the staff, and hike all the prices, because unlike with human medical care, there's hardly any regulation (yet).
Up here in Canada, we've seen vet clinics rapidly go corporate in the last couple of decades. Even ignoring prices, the degradation in the quality of care offered is stark. Vets working for corporate clinics are heavily micromanaged. They get less time per animal, are pressured into certain diagnoses and prescriptions, etc.. A lot of us now refuse to take our pets to clinics that aren't owned by the vets working there. Unfortunately, in many places there aren't a lot of options.
To put humans through this kind of misaligned system is the stuff of nightmares.