Wal-Mart--$4 for some generic prescriptions

For those of you who have not heard Wal-Mart has launched $4 for a months supply of some generic prescriptions. For this cost they have received a tremendous amount of free publicity which would have cost them much more than just lowering the cost of many drugs that people don’t use anymore.

Wal-Mart is saying that they are doing this to allow people without healthcare to have access to low cost medicine. I would argue that the point is that Wal-Mart is yet again trying to run all competition out of the market place. Wal-Mart can afford to lose money on some prescriptions.

The number one problem I see as a pharmacist is that insurance companies are soon to follow and only reimburse $4 for a prescription. It will quickly eliminate independent pharmacies at this reimbursement rate. The cost to fill a prescription is more than $4. If we are not going to be reimbursed for our services, which we never have been, then what are independent pharmacies supposed to do.
Pharmacy is already a profession that I would like to get out of, due to insurance companies and soon they will force me out, but is also a profession I love. I love it when I catch a doctor’s error on a prescription and am able to save a patient from unpleasant side-effects, a hospital stay, or even their lives. I love to be able to spend time with my patients and get to know them and help with their drug regimens. I love counseling patients about OTC medications and what they can and can not take. I love helping pregnant and breast feeding mothers with which drugs are safe and which are not. I really love recommending cheaper alternatives for high priced new drugs and telling patients that their doctors unfortunately are not gods. I love to break the myth that their doctor chose their drug therapy based on science when it was actually based on the fact that he/she had samples in the supply closet.

I have been an advocate for a long time, with no success, for set pricing of prescriptions drugs. I hate the fact that people with out insurance, in all aspects of healthcare, get screwed. Everyone knows this, but no one does anything about it. Just look at your insurance statement from your last doctor’s visit. It will say office visit-- Billed-$100 allowed $48. It is the same with pharmacy. If a company is willing to accept a price from an insurance company they should be willing to accept that same price from a cash paying customer. They should not have to form a buying group or pay a monthly premium to some insurance company to get a fair price for a service.

PBM’s (Pharmacy Benefit Managers) are the biggest crooks, well maybe besides drug manufacturers and oil companies, in the USA. That is why Medicare Part-D is such a sham, they along with manufactures wrote the law, and Republicans pushed it through no questions asked. I love the facts put out before it was passed. It will only cost us 400 billion dollars over ten years, now that figure is up to 1 trillion.

Anyway back to Wal-Mart, their goal here was not altruistic but to stick it to all competitors and to eliminate competition. I do feel sorry for their pharmacist, being a former one. They do have the bitchiest customers in the entire industry and this will only make their lives worse.

The link is to an article on Tom Paine about $4 rx’s and independent pharmacies.