[jchebert1979]

I forgot to post this but it is sad that the independent pharmacy is a thing of the past. They just cannot compete. In college I was a pharmacy tech at Wal-Mart and our selling price of some medications was lower that the cost of the medications for a lot of independents in the area.

I think the consumer suffers as well because it was high volume, get them in, get them out, don't f*%*k up. The pharmacy managers would actually get penalized if we did not fill enough prescriptions a day. In my time there, actual errors were rare, but delays were all over the place. Everything is automated so if there was a problem with insurance or anything like that, the script would not be filled and no one would know about it until the patient came to pick it up.

Also with all the high volume, if the pharmacist had to stop and council a patient, we would get backed up. This naturally led the pharmacist to begin to resent talking to patients and they suffered for it through no fault of their own. Wal-Mart may be saving people money with $4 prescriptions, but the pharmacist-patient relationship which I think is just as important as a doctor is almost extinct. Doctors have little knowledge when prescribing medicine. They go by the information that they get from the pharm. sales people. They don't have time to research it themselves and so I think the pharmacist is just as critical as the doctor since western medicine focuses so much on medication. It really is a shame but it is a reflection of the greed of our country and another nail in the coffin of our broken health care system.

I am not a democrat but I fully support a complete government takeover of the health care system. You can debate all you want about the inefficiency of our government but look at the postal service. They may not be turning a profit, but nowhere else in the world can you send a letter for under .50. It is cheap, reliable, and despite the cliche, most of their workers are very happy with their jobs. I find it disgusting that so many people can profit so much from the sick. Of course doctors deserve to make more money than others, but not rock star salaries. Whoo, man, I'm going off on a tangent here. Let me stop myself.