As someone who cannot take a generic for one specific medication, CVS has been my savior. The other pharmacies, for whatever reason, stopped stocking that particular medication a few years ago and will no longer order it. CVS stopped stocking it as well, but some of the locations will order it for you.

On the downside, only some of the locations will order it for you. Many are so busy that they don't answer their phones--ever (city problems). They also frequently try to refill it as a generic which is not the one that I need. So I have to go in person and not have delivery, so that I confirm I'm getting the correct medication every time.

How are pharmacies such a mess?

GoodRx is realizing handy since you can use it pretty much anywhere. If you meds are available at https://costplusdrugs.com then it could be significantly cheaper there. They are mail order only and don’t take insurance but they are often an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE cheaper!!! I have a prescription that’s covered by insurance and it’s still cheaper to get it from coat plus without insurance.

Having thought on it some more, I strongly suspect that they bought Bartell Drugs (local to Seattle and the surrounding areas) specifically because the real estate was valuable. Close the store, sell the real estate.

What flabbergasts me is the clear conflict of interest between infinite growth and actual patient care. We really need to take this profit model out of healthcare, the only people it hurts are us. Unions in all healthcare fields are about the only thing that can combat it now without actual legislation imo.

Forgive me on the (probably not totally accurate) details but I recall reading about how independent pharmacies get screwed over because insurance companies dictate what medications cost and therefore force these smaller independent pharmacies to sell their drugs at loss much of the time.

After writing this I did google it and found an article from a couple years ago: https://whyy.org/segments/the-hidden-players-putting-independent-pharmacies-out-of-business/

Why can’t anyone just run a pharmacy without jumping through hoops chasing infinite growth?

They can and they do. That would likely be any local, or privately owned pharmacies if there are still any near you. When a company goes public it becomes mandatory that they grow as much and as fast as they. They are now beholden to the board and other shareholders and if they aren't chasing growth, they can get into big trouble.

It's completely their decision to go public however, and they go public knowing what they'll have to do.

Pharmacist here. I can't really agree with that take. We have shared liability, in large part because the doctor is super good at diagnosis, and relatively good at what to prescribe for it, and a pharmacist is not good at all at diagnosis, but is trained specifically on medications and interactions.

A doctor should not be prescribing something harmful for you, but it happens, and the pharmacist catches it and calls and gets it straightened out. That's a normal situation, but opioids are a bit different.

The doctors were overprescibing, but we always were allowed to refuse prescriptions. If it was questionable, we can always call and document our conversation with the doctor. I've never heard of a pharmacist getting in trouble if they actually called and verified the MD did truly want that much medication, after being specifically warned of the risks.

If the pharmacists did that call for all of these, then I'm with you it's the doctors' fault. But if they just took in the prescriptions and filled them without checking for safe use, they failed to do their job protecting the patient from harm.

An addict will get or steal prescriptions from multiple doctors. How does policing doctors prevent abuse as well as making the pharmacy the gatekeeper?

My take is that Rite Aid didnt pay the proper congressman to make this go away