America needs to bust up these monopolies.
Maybe the silver lining is in some of the areas they pull out of, smaller independent pharmacies may be able to find a place to fill a need and do well.
“Walgreens and CVS drove thousands of small business pharmacies out of business”
In some cases Walgreens, at least, bought out independent pharmacies and merged them with their own or sometimes continued operating in the original location but under the Walgreens name. I know a pharmacist-owner who got a real nice retirement out of that.
You don’t know the half of it.
Walgreens and CVS are also engaged in price rigging and probable kickbacks, using a complicated scheme of “partnerships” with insurers, which in many cases means self-insured businesses.
Google “Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM)”
There was a big hearing in Congress this week about what amounts to raiding the treasury by manipulating the list of approved drugs and approved prices. But (of course) the people who thought this up are already high up in the “donor community”, so it’s likely that nothing will happen.
My insurance wants me to get my prescriptions mailed (via USPS) instead of going to a pharmacy.