If you thought that you knew what kind of company Walmart is

[SteveBailey]

She's on SSI  now and will be on medicaid when her savings runs out.  Is this hard to understand?

[texasmom]

Oh, I see. You're just reiterating what you already said a second ago. I thought you were onto something different. Yeah, same answer that I gave just a second ago also:

Yeah, I'm missing the part on where the government is picking up the entire tab for her care. I'll go back through & look at that again later to see where I missed that at.

[ZetaNine]

spot on. 

my area of practice is specific to entertainment law....but you sir, as Meatloaf would say....took the words right outta' my mouth.

Her contract stipulated that if she collected damages on a lawsuit, the company had the right to recoup whatever they spent on her health expenses stemming from the accident in question.

Not nice, not generous, but there was no lying here either. It was in plain language, and knowing this, her lawyer should have pressed for more money from the lawsuit to cover those expenses. The judgement may well have taken this into account, and compensated her accordingly. Unfortunate woman, careless lawyer... In fact, I bet about a thousand other lawyers would gladly take on her original firm in a malpractice case to pull the fees back out of them.

If you expect any corporation to disregard their own rules, or act human, as you say, then you're being too optimistic. Their main purpose on this earth is to make money, and they fulfill that purpose very efficiently.

[Shamus]

As more and more health plans turn insurance into a loan and kick responsibility over to the government, I would think that cutting out the middleman will become a more popular opinion.

shamus

[Simaril]

Just to play devil's advocate...

I gotta say that WalMart has done far, far more for patients with crap insurance than just about any corporation I can think of. For years the generic drug companies had avoided competition, and priced their stuff for $10-15 less than the very high brand name prices. Wally broke the logjam by pressing for the bulk discounts that led to the $4 prescription program. Unless you've seen it first hand, you can have absolutely NO IDEA how that's been a literal life saver for many, many people.

What torques me off is that the exact same drug that was selling for $110 per month as a prescription can go over the counter and sell for the equivalent of $30-40 per month, still as a branded product. I understand the economics from the drug maker's standpoint, but when I'm talking with an elderly patient on 8 drugs -- or a young patient with genetic high cholesterol and no drug coverage -- those sky-high prices leave real people with choices that are stark, and outcomes generally weren't pretty.

The Bush Medicare drug plan has been a disaster for many people who fell through the cracks. Now that the Government has stepped in, most retirees who HAD drug coverage now have much, much less help..and med costs that are far higher than they were with their good retirement insurance. At the same time, the premiums (and the "donut hole" that makes people essentially start with a new deductable when certain cost thresholds are reached) make the medicare drug plans pretty pricey, even for those who had nothing at all before. Lastly, once the government program showed up, the drug companies backed way off on their compassionate use free med programs...and since technology is shifting the drug sales business away from office samples (and instead relies on TV ads plus bar coded 1 month cards, one to a customer) the medication safety net that I used to provide from my office sample cabinet is gone too.


And all that's to say that for doctors and patients that are paying attention, the low cost programs that WalMart started are major, major public health positives. They've helped my people so much that they're going to have to go really, really far into the dark side before I'll start slamming them.

[WWhiskey]

Walmart, the number two donator in the world, gave more too charity than anyone else exept Bill and Linda Gates, for the last five years runing, just caved and changed there policy to a case by case basis, O and she gets too keep the money!

[Shamus]

The $4.00 drug plan was a marketing/political wonder, the guy that came up with that is a genius.

I mean defuse the reputation of being a non caring corporation and come up with the finest loss-leader program in recent memory.

When the other retailers saw the results, they fell all over themselves to match it.

It sure was not altruistic though.

shamus   

[Simaril]

The $4.00 drug plan was a marketing/political wonder, the guy that came up with that is a genius.

I mean defuse the reputation of being a non caring corporation and come up with the finest loss-leader program in recent memory.

When the other retailers saw the results, they fell all over themselves to match it.

It sure was not altruistic though.

shamus   

Altrusitic? Never even considered that might be the motivation. I'm sure that just like their DVD prices, their drug prices have a foundation in cold hard business.

Fact remains though that they were the ones who did it. But don't underestimate the impact! It was more than a loss leader program...it stuck a knife in the heart of traditional pharmacy business model. For the longest time, pharmacies barely kept ahead when they moved branded products. They made a good chunk of their profit margin by padding out the generics, because there was more wiggle room. The market was set up to allow everyone at every step of the generic chain harvest a bit more cash than they could get out of a purely competitive system; Wal Marts purchasing power essentially forced the generic manufacturers to cut that out and price things way closer to the actual cost. And yeah, I honestly think that for many of the meds on that list Wal Mart is pretty close to breaking even. Don't forget that the generic manufacturers don't have to pay one thin dime to develop or market products. All they have to do is basic industrial chemistry with high quality control, in a business that has highly mature and automated techniques.

Even before Walmart's move, some meds were selling in that price range. They were mostly older meds in established, stable fields (like thyroid meds, which went for $8-10 per month brand name). Wal Mart took that those principles and forced the generic manufacturers to apply them to other compounds, and while it helps their own pharmacy business the major thrust was probably a vigorous attack on large pharmacy only chains like CVS, etc.

But I don't care about that. What I care about is that the net effect of WalMarts cutthroat aggressive business model is that common people can afford medications that prevent catastrophic disease.