Holy shit, I had no idea CVS owned Aetna. That kind of vertical should never be allowed, that’s insane. Man I hope our kickass FTC chair Lina Kahn gets 4 more years, she’s been doing yeoman’s work against 40 years of no enforcement, hope she gets to keep digging into this crap.
I bought cough drops at a CVS once. They were like 4x the price of the grocery store. It’s no wonder their insurance sucks. Also, yes, verticals like that should not exist.
The crazy part is the pharmacy retailers are now closing hundreds of locations nationwide. For those who have a reliable mail order maybe that works but there are so many situations when you “absolutely positively have to get a prescription on short noticeand can accept no substitutes” retail has to exist.
Hope mark Cuban can make a dent.
These big pharmacies have their own PBMs (Pharmacy Benefit Managers) also, which is this middleman that sits between employee healthcare plans, drug manufacturers, and the pharmacy. CVS’s is called Caremark.
I’ve seen some of that. Big capital running scared. Kamala is pretty centrist, would not be surprised at all if she bows to their pressure, same stuff with Israel.