If physicians were hoping the major retail chains would take their time expanding into health services, they should know it’s a false hope. The Financial Times reported on Friday (sorry, but the paper only displays the first few sentences for free) that the chains are forming an industry association and lobby group–as yet unnamed but possibly to be called the Convenient Care Industry Association–to represent their rapidly expanding interests. Noted the Financial Times: "By the end of next year, hundreds of walk-in clinics will be open in some of the country’s largest drugstore and retail groups, including Wal-Mart, Target, CVS, Walgreens and RiteAid." (For details on how this trend is upsetting this winter’s flu shot routine, see my recent BusinessWeek.com article.)
I’m not normally a big fan of corporate behemoths like Wal-Mart, and their efforts to squash smaller players by offering products and services at rock-bottom prices, but when you think about it, their new thrust could be beneficial to consumers without health insurance, and there are millions of people in that boat. If there’s any industry that needs shaking up, it’s the healthcare industry, and if you’ve ever waited hours for treatment of your child’s strep throat in an emergency room–only to be billed huge amounts for the privilege–you know what I mean. Choices and competition can work wonders and physicians and hospitals can use shaking up more than just about any industry group I can think of.
There’s a relationship between the Wal-Martization of health care and the government’s persecution of raw milk dairy Organic Pastures. The government wants to prevent us from drinking raw milk, supposedly for our safety, even though packaged spinach has been shown to be much more dangerous than raw milk. But even if raw milk were as dangerous as spinach, shouldn’t consumers have the right to make their own choice about whether or not to drink the suff?
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