|
I have a biz healthcare backgrund.. ITs pretty easy really. Here's how they do it.
- First of all its not all the meds. Its a list or formulary of drugs. The cheaper ones.
- All the Drugs are Generic. (not a bad thing)
- Its only for a 30 day supply.
- In most situations, and Walmart knows this, they are still getting paid more than $4.00 beacause they are still billing your insurance. They are simply making the co-pay for you $4.00 and taking a hit from what your normal copay is. Yes there are some CASH uninsured customers as well, but Walmart figures in most people are insured.
-Walmart does this to gain marketshare. Its a common and smart biz practice to sacrifice some profit to gain marketshare from your competition. This is a great marketing tactic to get into people's heads that "Walmart does 4.00 prescriptions"... Fact of the matter is many pharmacies do this now. In fact most do. The $4.00 thing is done almost everywhere now.
-Having had worked in a pharmacy, youd be suprised what "COST" really is for a lot of these drugs. For example a 100 count of your favorite Herpes meds is sold for over $100.00.... The cost is $12.00.... The cost of your basic Anti-Biotic like Amox is about 3.00 and sold for around 20.00....
Fast movers like Vicodin (generic), common antibiotics, common blood pressure meds, thyroid meds, all are pretty cheap in terms of cost. They still make money by billing the insurance company in full and by taking the loss for your co-pay. Cash customers (uninsured) they may be losing some $$, but its not much. The prescriptions on that list are all pretty cheap "cost" wise. And they calculate even if they lose money they still gain it in market share and marketabilty.
So you see its actually quite simple.
And thats how the world works.
Damn, its been a while since Ive actually had to post an intellgent thread.
BP4L baby.
|