What leverage does Wal-Mart have?
($4 is still so cheap it barely makes sense, though) Chuckles: If nothing else was happening, sure, 5 minutes easy with counting+checking+insurance+typing+printing, but 10-20 minutes because they’ve got a bunch of other pill-counting to do, and Mrs. X’s insurance card didn’t work because it had the wrong birthdate on it so you’ve gotta call the insurer, and you’re still waiting for a callback from Dr. Y, and plenty other stuff is going on. We always told people the wait was going to be 25 minutes so they’d just come back later instead of milling about (20 seemed to be the limit on that one).
As soma mentioned, the current insurance system provides very little incentive for insured consumers to comparison shop drugs by prince. A little casual googling or just some phone calls will demonstrate this – numerous magazines and newspapers have documented the tremendous variety in drug prices, generic and prescription. If this link doesn’t work, go over to costco.com and pick the pharmacy link on the top, then ‘pricing information’ and you can get their prices on drugs. Now call a pharmacy that’s near that Costco and ask them a few prices. I am sure they’ll be notably higher. Why? The membership fee is only part of the story – I’ll also bet that if you asked 100 of the people walking into that Costco if they use the Costco pharm you’d only get a yes on less than 1 in 10. There’s no motivation for an individ
