[enumjorge]

Something similar is happening in the dental world in the US. Private equity companies are buying up individual practices, and with the sky-high loans required to go to dental school, it's becoming very difficult for new dentists to go into private practice. That means that when a dentist retires there's increasingly fewer individual dentists willing to buy the practice and they end up going to private equity. I truly believe this will result in poorer quality of care, and it's sad to see where we're headed, but I don't know if anything can be done.

[mike_d]

Vision as well.

Luxottica manufactures and wholesales 25% of all sunglasses and prescription frames in the world (Oakley, Ray Ban, Chanel, Coach, etc). They own the second largest vision insurance company. 20% of US and 10% of worldwide retail sales are in one of their 9,100 stores: LensCrafters, Pearle Vision, Target Optical, Sunglass Hut, Glasses.com, etc. If you decide to go to a local independent optometrist, they also own the two largest equipment manufactures.

[ceejayoz]

The 20/10% numbers predate their merger with Essilor, it's even worse now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica#Criticism

I dread the day they buy Zenni and take my $25 glasses away.

[JKCalhoun]

Then we'll be talking our pets to Mexico too now.

[paulcole]

> it's becoming very difficult for new dentists to go into private practice

I work with a lot of dentists and this is somewhat untrue. It’s challenging to open a practice and isn’t for everyone, but dentist offices rarely “fail” and a loan to open a dental office is up there with the easiest loans to get.

I do agree that over time dental groups (either owned by PE or dentists) will become more common.