Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

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> The last thing anyone needs when caring for their pet is a government bureaucrat handing out human-medicine style hospital monopolies to a "partnered provider" knighted by the government which will force a 100x billing charge to bill the govt and make it illegal to not have pet insurance while driving your premiums up 100x over the next 30 years.

Do you really think this is what people want when they call for increased government regulation?

    Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

Government regulation can take many forms, not all of them dystopian, and many of them leading to better outcomes. Sadly there are a lot of people, even here in the comment section, for whom, when you say "government regulation," their imagination jumps to the worst possible form of government regulation they can think of, and they project that imagined scenario on the person who said it. There are no doubt many ways the government can rein in the excesses and abuses of private equity without leading to hospital monopolies and forced purchases of pet insurance.

Unfortunately, I think I'm in that boat. Truly, I appreciate the discourse.

However, whether or not that's what people want, that's the reality. Next time you get a medical charge, even with insurance, ask for an itemized bill. Compare the bill you receive to the one you receive when you tell them "I'm paying with cash". When I pay cash with a third party provider, they "magically" reduce the amount I owe by orders of magnitude, even for simple bloodwork (United States, major metropolitan area).

Again, in good faith, what am I supposed to expect when I hear regulation in animal medicine? People like my partner are studying and training for years to do this work. People are leasing or buying real estate for these facilities.

They are buying equipment, they are hiring trained surgeons, nurses, and practitioners who have been committing at minimum a decade of their life for this - what am I supposed to expect with "calls for regulation" a la human medicine style (the only comparison we have), especially when prices are ACTUALLY competitive, as I believe the human medicine market should be?

I can be convinced of any position, but it has to make sense. What prices or charges, even with private equity-funded veterinary firms, do you consider egregious and need a non-opt-outable mandatory third party oversight for? Has there been a good or a service you feel was only available at a specific provider that they gouged you on? Again, not being aggressive, just genuinely curious.

For the record, I am more in favor of the government regulating Private Equity (in particular, the use of leveraged buyouts, LBOs): 1. more scrutiny of their own business practices, and 2. limitations on their ability to buy up companies from a community, plunder them, and then leave the community strip mined. I really don't think regulating the operations of veterinary hospitals is going to solve the problems brought up in this comment section.

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