Are you thinking R134A? IIRC, R132A theoretically exists but nobody makes it. And R134A is an automotive refrigerant. Most residential systems in the last 10 years likely use R410A (which is itself a mixture of R32 and R125). That is getting phased out and generally replaced with plain R32, as far as I know.
Now that I look at the website of the company that did the installation, it seems all their AC models now use R32.
And the current R134a patents are just set to expire. Inhalers which should cost $5/ea are set to be $90/ea again.
This is the same thing they did when CFC were banned and they switched from CFC to R134a. This is a medication that should have been off patent decades ago, but due to this "trick", it almost certainly never will be.