Walmart woes.....

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sdn1977

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Forgive me if I'm posting an issue twice or which has been addressed on another thread (perhaps the $4 Walmart thread.....I haven't read in a few days.)

Today, Walmart had to cancel influenza immunizations in N CA....their shipment from their wholesaler was frozen....so not able to be used. So...they are out of influenza for the near future - the rest of us are picking up their slack.

Many other large clinics are either short or out as well.....except for the large chains (Walmart excluded). Can't figure out why - we haven't had any trouble obtaining it😕 .

Walmart didn't eat the loss - Cardinal Health did. Walmart just didn't make any money on the immunizations.

Interesting tidbit, I thought.
 
The vaccine is released in increments, and the big guys pick it up first, followed by smaller dollar buyers. The big clinics are small dollar, relatively speaking. The chains often try to get most of their vaccine in at the very beginning of the season, creating artificial shortages for others and enhancing their own business. Thus the "supply issues".

What sucks is that in some small towns where there are no big vendors, the vaccine isn't available until later in the season.
 
Wal-mart doesn't give two craps about health care anyway. I am glad they were not able to offer the flu shots. They are about as anti-pharmacy as one can possibly be
 
The vaccine is released in increments, and the big guys pick it up first, followed by smaller dollar buyers. The big clinics are small dollar, relatively speaking. The chains often try to get most of their vaccine in at the very beginning of the season, creating artificial shortages for others and enhancing their own business. Thus the "supply issues".

What sucks is that in some small towns where there are no big vendors, the vaccine isn't available until later in the season.

Funny - we have three big clinics in our area.....have approx 300 prescribers each. Each have pharmacies which do as many rxs as any retail chain.....

Gotta wonder what's up with that? I guess its volume, altho they would have bought bunches.
 
Wal-mart doesn't give two craps about health care anyway. I am glad they were not able to offer the flu shots. They are about as anti-pharmacy as one can possibly be

http://walmartwatch.com/blog/archives/is_wal_marts_4_drug_program_a_good_deal_or_marketing_ploy/

From the Seattle Times:

Executives of retailing giant Wal-Mart gathered at the Lynnwood store Thursday to announce that its pharmacies in Washington will now join other Wal-Mart stores around the country in offering certain generic drugs for $4 a month.

But Becky Boast, who arrived at the Lynnwood pharmacy Thursday to refill her asthma inhaler, still had to pay $35. Her prescription was one of the many not on Wal-Mart’s $4 list.

As Washington and 10 other states were added to Wal-Mart’s two-month-old generics program, consumer groups and independent-pharmacy organizations said Boast isn’t alone. The groups continue to complain that the deal is primarily aimed at luring customers into stores to shop for other stuff. And Wal-Mart’s program applies to a mere fraction of the thousands of drugs on the market.

Even so, in other parts of the country, other retail chains have lowered prices on generic drugs to match Wal-Mart’s prices.

And Boast, a 41-year-old cabinetmaker and mother who helps seniors with home health care, was so enthusiastic about the idea that she said she would drive straight home to Woodinville and call her friends.

“This is huge!” she said. “I think this is really going to help not only kids but the elderly.”

143 drugs included

Wal-Mart’s offer applies to 143 different drugs, in 331 different versions and dosage levels. It doesn’t apply to any drugs without generic versions. Typically, generic drugs cost patients $2 to $100 or more, said Donna Aitoumeziane, Wal-Mart’s regional pharmacy manager. Generic drugs are regulated by the government and have the same active ingredients as brand-name equivalents.

Wal-Mart launched the program in September in Florida, and added 26 other states last month. Other states added to the program Thursday were Idaho, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia.

Not a money-loser

As they introduced the program Thursday, Wal-Mart officials said the chain won’t lose money on the deal. “This isn’t a loss leader,” said Gina Stamp, the company’s pharmacy market manager for Puget Sound.

Stamp said drugs on the list are those that Wal-Mart was able to get for lower prices from suppliers. “That’s always been a philosophy of the company — to go after lower costs and pass those savings on,” Stamp said.

Thursday, the Kmart chain reiterated that it has a program in Washington that offers some generic drugs for $15 for a three-month supply. After earlier expansions in other states, the Target chain matched the discounts. But other chains, including Walgreens, said they would not change prices because, they contended, they already are competitive. Costco did not say Thursday whether it would change its prices.

Stamp said Wal-Mart welcomed the price cuts that other chains have made in response as a “collaborative effort to lower health-care costs” for everyone.

Limited benefits

But Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a consumer group based in Washington, D.C., cautioned that the benefits will be limited.

The program will help some patients who take the select drugs on the list, he said. But the list doesn’t include the vast majority of the thousands of generic drugs now available — and it includes none of the more expensive brand-name drugs, he said.

Pollack also noted that the program won’t help people who can’t afford to see a doctor to get a prescription.

“It’s important not to exaggerate how many people it will help,” Pollack said.

And while Wal-Mart list looks long, with 331 “generic prescriptions,” many are the same drug in different dosages or formulations. For example, the list includes 14 different formulations of the antibiotic amoxicillin. In addition, some drugs on the list are available over the counter at the same dosages.

"The question people should be asking Wal-Mart is, ‘What will you be charging for the other 99 percent of the medications that people need?’ “ Bruce Roberts, the CEO of the National Community Pharmacists Association, said in a statement. He noted that many of the generics on the list are older drugs with more side effects than the current preferred medicines for certain conditions."

Medicaid costs

Jennifer Holder, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman at the Lynnwood event, said the company will continue to add to the list. And Wal-Mart officials predict the program will save the state hundreds of thousands of dollars annually through lowered Medicaid costs.

State officials said that could be true, because pharmacies can only charge the state their lowest price for prescriptions. But it won’t affect Medicaid patients themselves, because they don’t pay for prescription drugs, said Jim Stevenson, a spokesman for the state Medicaid program.

But patients who pay at least part of their prescription bill said they were happy to save a little money.

“It proves that private enterprise can take care of health-care needs,” said William Cox, 71, of Everett, who said he and his wife spend about $500 a month on medications. Now one of their diabetes drugs is on Wal-Mart’s $4 list.
 
Wal-mart doesn't give two craps about health care anyway. I am glad they were not able to offer the flu shots. They are about as anti-pharmacy as one can possibly be

http://walmartwatch.com/blog/archives/relief_for_some_but_not_many_in_wal_mart_drug_plan/

From today’s New York Times:

At first glance, Wal-Mart’s plan to sharply cut the cost of generic drugs, to $4, seems like a signal event in American health care. It could make scores of treatments affordable to the uninsured, reduce the burden on Medicaid and bring competitive pricing to the pharmacy industry.

Even company critics have praised the plan, conceding that it represents a case of the giant retailer using its size and ability to wring out costs to improve the lives of regular Americans.

But a close examination of the program, with details confirmed by the company yesterday, suggests that its impact could be blunted by several factors.

The plan, which is said to cover 300 drugs, includes only about 124 separate medicines in various dosages, like 12 versions of the popular antibiotic amoxicillin. It leaves out some popular drugs altogether, like the generic version of the cholesterol-lowering treatment Zocor.

And while uninsured people should benefit from the program, those with insurance may save only a dollar or so, making a trip to Wal-Mart not worth their while, analysts said. In Florida, where the program will have its debut, most people on Medicaid pay nothing and may have little incentive to shop around for cheaper prescription drugs.

“It is not as significant as it first seems, in our opinion,” said Joseph Agnese, an analyst at Standard & Poor’s, who expressed surprise at investors’ reaction to the Wal-Mart announcement, which sent shares of its competitors CVS and Walgreen down sharply yesterday.

As it has for dozens of consumer products, Wal-Mart reduced prices of generic prescription drugs by attacking the few remaining pockets of inefficiency in its operations. For example, it cut out third-party distributors that stood between the chain and drug manufacturers.

“There is a huge profit margin in the generics” for the middlemen like pharmacy benefit managers, the distributors and the pharmacies themselves, said Patricia Wilson of Associates & Wilson, a Rosemont, Pa., health care consulting firm. Wal-Mart appears to be taking some of those profits from the traditional middlemen to lower the prices it is charging for these generic drugs.

The company also introduced rapid, automated machines into its pharmacy distribution centers that had long relied on workers to fill orders. In doing so, Wal-Mart reduced the amount of time that costly drugs sat in warehouses, rather than on store shelves where they could create revenue. “It is not glamorous,” said Bill Simon, an executive vice president at Wal-Mart. “It’s pennies at a time.”

Wal-Mart said that by covering one-fifth of the generic drugs it prescribes at its more than 3,000 United States pharmacies, the new program would make it possible for thousands of people to buy drugs they either cannot afford or currently ration, sometimes by cutting pills in half, to cut costs.

Under the plan, which will begin in the Tampa, Fla., area — and the company says will eventually expand to the rest of the country beginning next year — the $4 fee charged by Wal-Mart will be paid by a combination of consumers, insurance companies and the federal government, depending on a person’s health coverage. On average, generic drugs are now sold at retail for $10 to $30 for a 30-day supply.

An insured customer will not pay more than $4, no matter what the co-payment is, the company said. Wal-Mart would bill the insurer for the difference if the co-payment was below $4. Customers whose co-payment is above $4 are unlikely to use insurance, but pay for the drug out of pocket. Where required, Medicaid users would still pay a small co-payment for a prescription drug, with the government billed the balance. In the past, Wal-Mart might have billed the government significantly more than $4 for a generic drug. “It’s a tremendous savings for state Medicaid,” said Mr. Simon, the Wal-Mart executive.

But Christa Calamas, secretary of the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, said the state would probably save money only on those Medicaid consumers who already fill prescriptions at Wal-Mart. Since most Florida Medicaid users pay nothing for their prescriptions, they are likely to choose convenient pharmacy locations over lower prices, experts said.

Wal-Mart said it would not lose money on the low-cost generic drugs — and, in fact, several industry analysts predicted the company’s pharmacy business would benefit from the new plan. Unlike CVS or Walgreen, which rely on prescription sales for most of their revenues, Wal-Mart’s pharmacy business represents less than 10 percent of its total revenue and the company has identified it as an area that needs improvement.

By luring customers of all incomes into the store at least once a month to fill generic drug prescriptions, Wal-Mart could increase overall pharmacy and store sales, these analysts said.

Health care analysts were quick to point out that Wal-Mart has carefully chosen which drugs it will cover — 300 out of roughly 11,000 generic drugs available. Moreover, it is not offering some expensive drugs, like any of the cholesterol-lowering statins, at the $4 price. And some of the drugs covered, like generic ibuprofen, cost very little and may be currently available for less than $4. “They are not losing money on all these products,” said Ms. Wilson, the health care consultant.

But she praised Wal-Mart for bringing attention to the cost savings available from generic drugs, which are significantly less expensive than their branded counterparts. Wal-Mart could also introduce much greater competition to the marketplace by pushing the concept of discounts into what has traditionally been an inefficient market. “People will begin to compare prices,” she said.

Wal-Mart has come under fierce attack for its employee health benefits; critics contend the benefits are too costly, given the typical Wal-Mart worker’s wages, and frequently force employees to rely on state programs or forgo coverage altogether. With the lower generic drug prices, which apply to its workers as well as customers, the company appears to be trying to address those concerns.

Still, critics say this plan does little to confront the high costs of health care for the uninsured, including Wal-Mart employees, since they still face the expense of going to a doctor to get a prescription, for example. While the plan is a good first step, “it is clearly as much a public relations effort as a substantive change,” said Ron Pollack, the executive director of Families USA, a Washington consumer group that has often criticized Wal-Mart’s health care offerings.

Wal-Mart’s chief executive, H. Lee Scott Jr., said that “competition and market forces have been absent from our health care system, and that has hurt working families tremendously.” The company, he added, is “excited to take the lead in doing what we do best — driving costs out of the system — and passing those savings to our customers and associates,” as Wal-Mart refers to its employees.
 
man that's a lot of reading there.
 
Wal-mart doesn't give two craps about health care anyway. I am glad they were not able to offer the flu shots. They are about as anti-pharmacy as one can possibly be

I am with this guy. Wal-mart cares about the all mighty dollar. They could care less about anyones health, just ask their employees.
 
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