Wal-mart Brings 'Always The Low Price' To Generic Drugs
CRABBY HAS A DIRTY SECRET: SHE LIKES WAL-MART! Yes, I know, I should hang my head in shame and avert my eyes any time some 'elite' yuppie looks at me askance for liking cheap products made with Chinese teen labor. (In the interest of full disclosure, Crabby lives far too many miles away from Wal-mart to actually shop there, but she would.)
While academics and journalists have feverishly documented the deleterious effects of having Wal-mart come to town, Crabby has always been in awe of the bath towels and lead-laden children's toys that could be had for just a few dollars! By golly, the businessman down Main Street might be going out of business, but poor folk in town could never afford to shop in his hardware anyway.
So now comes news that Wal-mart has expanded its discounted prescription drug program to provide up to 350 generic meds at $10 for a 90-day supply! The company also added several women's medications to its list of $9 prescriptons, including drugs to treat breast cancer and hormone deficiency.
The expansion aims to help customers at a time of exorbitant health-care costs and difficult economic times while further boosting the ranking of Sam Walton's heirs on the list of America's richest. "It offers the customers significant savings,'' the spokesman said. "It also offers us the ability to add capacity to our pharmacies without adding people." More profit without having to provide those pesky and expensive benefits! Can't you hear Bush and his cronies cheering, 'Yee-ha! Go Wal-mart! Go Wal-mart! Go Wal-mart!'
Crabby welcomes Wal-mart's foray into cheap drugs, as long as none of them are made at the same China factor that the blood thinner Heparin was made. Frankly, she's waiting for the Wal-mart cancer centers to open. Because she knows that even though some patients might have to die in order to maximize the big box's scaled economy, think of the competitive pressure on your local health care provider. Capitalist America is at its best when we're wringing razor-thin profits from macro economies.
The federal government could learn something from those simple folks down in Arkansas. For Wal-Mart is the paradox that citizens require big government to be: Both giver and taker, daddy and mommy, all rolled into one big single-payer provider.
Posted May 6, 2008
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