My parents ended up being forced by circumstances to move into a retirement home about five years ago. Fortunately, the place turned out to be run by people who mostly cared about their clients and so my parents' lives were basically OK, except that the food sucked (which AFAICT is par for the course at retirement homes). But a few months ago the place was acquired by a different company, which is trying to squeeze out higher profits. Staffing and services are being cut, and prices are going up. Even the food got worse, which I didn't think was even possible. The response when someone complains is, "If you don't like it you are free to leave."

Yeah, right. My barely mobile 90-year-old parents, one of whom has Parkinson's, are just going to pack up and go. They know perfectly well that they have a captive audience.

Thankfully, my mother died before the acquisition, and my father died last week, only a few months after the acquisition, so I don't have to deal with this any more. But caveat emptor: if you ever go into a retirement home, think about what will happen if they change ownership. Even if it looks great, or even acceptable, now, there is no guarantee that it will still be great, or even acceptable, tomorrow, unless you somehow manage to negotiate such a guarantee. I have no idea what a contract provision like that would even look like. But I am going to be facing this problem myself some day, so I'd love to hear ideas.

I’m sure the new owners are scummy, but the fundamental problem isn’t scummy people. There’s lots of markets that are okay-ish notwithstanding scummy people. Even those with natural lock in effects.

The fundamental problem is it is at the intersection of two out of the three areas of the economy that have had insane cost growth over the last 30 years—-housing and healthcare (the third is education.) For the first one we know roughly what we need to do but won’t. For the second we don’t even have that.