Comment by MarkusAllen
10 hours ago
The challenge: these entities are designed to be hard to identify until after you're locked in.
With autism centers specifically:
- They keep the local brand name after acquisition
- By the time you realize service quality dropped, your kid is mid-treatment
- Long waitlists at other centers make switching costly
The best "opt-out tool" is learning to recognize the patterns before signing up. Questions to ask:
- Was this recently acquired?
- Do therapists mention high turnover?
- Are there unexplained price increases?
I made a glossary of the terminology these firms use: https://founderstowne.com/extraction-terms.html
Understanding terms like "Roll-Up" and "Cost Optimization" helps you pattern-match before you're stuck.
Identifying them at least it's a better thing than not. The lock-in challenge can be solved too, also through organizing, activism and politics.