Government intervention, overzealous litigation, and poorly designed insurance policies have done much to restrict the health care market in the United States. Other than a few doctors who only take cash and refuse to deal with insurance, there has not been much room for the health care market to operate freely other than in the creation of new products.
Last Friday, WalMart took a small step that could help restore some sanity to the marketplace.
Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, plans to slash the prices of almost 300 generic prescription drugs, offering a big lure for bargain-seeking customers and presenting a challenge to competing pharmacy chains and makers of generic drugs.The drugs will be sold for as little as $4 for a month's supply and include some of the most commonly prescribed medicines such as Metformin, a popular generic drug used to treat diabetes, and the high blood pressure medicine Lisinopril.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will launch the program Friday at 65 Wal-Mart, Neighborhood Market and Sams' Club pharmacies in Florida's Tampa Bay area. It will be expanded statewide in January and rolled out to the rest of the nation next year, company officials said Thursday.
Nice to see WalMart using their expertise and buying power to start reducing drug costs. I think this is a brilliant move on their part. I expect the PR impact was definitely considered by WalMart, but more power to them for devising a plan to help people by using their strengths. Combined with WalMart’s recent green stance in reducing packaging waste, it will be interesting to see how liberals react to WalMart. Logically, they should applaud these moves of WalMart. However, I suspect most of the opposition to WalMart is emotional and that liberals will continue to disparage and attack WalMart at any opportunity.
For my part, I applaud WalMart for their efforts and will ensure they receive much future business from my household.
Category: Economics , Category: General , Category: Quests for Change
There is already a segment of the Health Care industry that is market driven. A segment where there is no health insurance coverage, and where as a result the consumer of the services pays for the services received.
In that segment of the Health Care Industry there has not been the inflation that occurs in larger segment where one person is the consumer, another (the doctor/hospital) the seller and a third (the employer or government) the payer-of-the-bills.
That is in cosmetic plastic surgery.
There people choose the provider based on price and quality of results. There costs, numbers of providers and demand some how work themselves out. There overpriced providers get no business and patients don't demand 3, 4, 5 (or more) breast implants "because they are free at the point of service and I want to be sure I get my share."
There may be some underlying principal at work here. Maybe some Biz School Prof could write a paper on the phenomenon.