Private Equity's Profit-Driven Takeover of Everyday Life Is Degrading Quality and Raising Costs for American Families
Source: Terry Schilling. "Private Equity Is Making Everyone's Life Worse." September 7, 2026. thefederalist.com
The Gist
The author argues that private equity firms have bought up huge chunks of things families depend on—houses, fertility clinics, daycare, youth sports, and nursing homes—and made all of them worse: pricier, lower quality, and more stressful. He concludes that instead of the government offering more subsidies or benefits, lawmakers should regulate private equity directly to stop it from squeezing profit out of every corner of American life.
Conclusion
Private equity's expansion into housing, fertility, childcare, youth sports, and healthcare is making ordinary American life worse, and the solution is to regulate private equity rather than expand government welfare programs.
Premises
- Private equity has taken over consumer businesses like Krispy Kreme, replacing fresh, local products with centralized, lower-quality alternatives, causing stock value to plummet.
- Private investors now purchase roughly 32% of homes sold, driving up prices and pushing the median age of first-time homebuyers to 40 while first-time buyer share hits an all-time low.
- Private equity owns about 30% of the fertility industry and has helped popularize IVF despite low success rates and health risks, profiting from a fertility crisis it did not cause but capitalizes on.
- Private equity owns 10-12% of childcare facilities (including 8 of the 11 largest providers), correlating with higher costs and underpaid, overworked staff.
- Private equity has consolidated youth sports (teams, facilities, apparel, streaming) into a 'roll-up' business model that inflates costs and pressures families into expensive travel sports.
- Private equity owns 5-13% of nursing homes, and its cost-cutting model (e.g., firing nurses, shifting costs to taxpayer-backed hospitals) has coincided with bankruptcies and declining care quality.
- Across all these industries, when profit maximization becomes the primary goal after PE acquisition, consumer and family welfare consistently suffers.
Assumptions
- The presence of private equity ownership is a primary causal driver of quality decline and price increases, rather than one factor among many (e.g., inflation, labor costs, regulation, supply constraints).
- The traditional, pre-PE version of these industries (local doughnut shops, rec league sports, family-owned nursing homes) was categorically better for consumers and families.
- Regulation targeting private equity specifically is a viable and sufficient policy solution, distinct from and superior to expanded government benefit programs.
- Correlations between percentage of PE ownership and negative outcomes (cost, quality) in a given sector reflect a causal relationship rather than coincidence or confounding variables.
- The interests of private equity investors (profit maximization) are inherently and necessarily opposed to consumer/family welfare, with no possibility of aligned incentives.