You wrote

"it is because the business is suffering from financial hardship or the current owner is unable to continue to run the business and cannot find a successor, so selling to private equity would be the least bad option."

It should be

"PE offered by far the most money and will make up for it by raising prices and reducing service"

That's exactly what happened with that dentist practice. For years I went there, got a cleaning and was told "keep doing what you are doing". After the takeover they found some problem with almost every visit and fixing it coincidentally would have cost exactly the $1500 my insurance was covering each year.