Wal-Mart : Cheap meds real reform
Posted on Tuesday, July 8, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/230741/
ROGERS — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. officials told home-state lawmakers Monday that the company’s simplified, cheaper prescription-drug program constitutes real health-care reform.
In 2006, Wal-Mart began filling prescriptions for certain drugs for $ 4 for up to a 30-day prescription, a program the company touts as cutting through the complexities of the pharmaceutical industry. Customers can buy more than 350 prescription drugs that way.
“I think our $ 4 drug program has been the only true healthcare reform in the United States, in that it definitely changed the landscape in terms of health-care delivery,” Joe Quinn, Wal-Mart’s senior director of health-care policy, told Arkansas lawmakers gathered in Rogers.
Quinn, who was a policy director in then-Gov. Mike Huckabee’s administration before joining Wal-Mart, was speaking to members of the House and Senate committees on Public Health, Welfare and Labor.
Legislators traveled to Northwest Arkansas for the meeting in which Wal-Mart’s programs comprised the only agenda item. For the most part, legislators were receptive, but they weren’t all satisfied with the discussion.
Sen. Percy Malone, D-Arkadelphia, who owns several pharmacies, said Wal-Mart is just trying to polish its image. It wasn’t long ago that the company had a bad reputation for its employees ’ health-care program, he said.
“Now, they’re giving us lectures on how to take care of America with health care — and I guess that’s ‘Shop at Wal-Mart, ’” he said in an interview.
Malone was particularly perturbed because he didn’t think Wal-Mart officials were clear in their presentation that the $ 4 prescription doesn’t necessarily buy a whole 30 days’ worth of pills. He used prescriptionstrength ibuprofen, which some people take regularly, as an example.
He said it’s not because he’s a competitor.
“I’ve done this for 40 years. I’m used to competing. I just want it to be fair,” he said. He’s adding his own $ 4 prescription program, as other retailers have done in response to Wal-Mart.
Quinn said the idea of the $ 4, 30-day prescription — and its counterpart, the $ 10, 90-day prescription — is to give customers a less complicated health-care system.
“A word we hear a lot is overwhelmed,” he said. “That’s just a word people use. They’re overwhelmed at the complexity of it, at trying to understand different options available to their families.”
Paul Beahm, senior vice president for Wal-Mart’s Pharmacy Division, spoke before Malone arrived at the meeting. He said customers have said that health care is a major concern and that the medicine discount plan allows them to get a prescription from their doctors, pay cash and not worry about an insurance co-payment or similar requirements.
“That’s the simplest form for the transaction, and that’s the way years and years ago it was,” he said.
The company always is trying to add more drugs but only does so based on cost, he said. Wal-Mart makes a profit on each prescription, he said.
Rep. Tracy Pennartz, D-Fort Smith, told Beahm she worried that small-town pharmacists, in places where there might not even be a Wal-Mart, will have trouble competing.
“I want those small pharmacies to be able to operate, because those pharmacies are very involved in their communities and are a source of medical information for their neighbors,” Pennartz said after the meeting.
Rep. Ray Kidd, D-Jonesboro, said he understands retail competition as an antiques-store owner who used to work for Wal-Mart competitor Walgreen Co. He said Wal-Mart has helped people by cutting prices. He said he considers it a company that helps local communities and has “heart.”
Pennartz said she likes Wal-Mart and makes a regular weekend trip to a Wal-Mart.
Malone said he doesn’t.
“I don’t spend my weekends shopping at Wal-Mart. I’ve got a real life,” he said. Lawmakers and others in the room groaned loudly in response. “I know where I am,” Malone said, referring to Benton County, headquarters of Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer.