Sunday, June 26, 2011

Low Drug Costs to Get In

The Details:
An interesting angle to NCPA's push for The Medicare Access to Diabetes Act.

Market analysis is seeming to show that Wal-Mart is using its low cost prescriptions, to the point of losing money per prescription filled, as a means to get customers in the door, only to increase the costs on other items (here diabetes supplies) to make up the difference.

My Feelings:
There are many angles of consideration here, and one of these days I will try to exhaustively list my feelings on the issue. In short: I am in NCPA because I feel independent business is vitally important to a thriving economy, and Wal-Mart has caused many independent businesses to go out of business. Yet, it is not Wal-Mart that does that, since it is the customers who opt to go to Wal-Mart who do so. In economic terms Wal-Mart has operated efficiently, and should be respected for such. My supreme concern is that the economic playing field be balanced and open. If one business is allowed to muscle its way through because of its size, and because it can sustain a larger game of attrition or it can get away with questionable practices, then the customer/patient suffers.