Walgreens: The Pharmacy that Screws America

Gee, where do I start bitching about Walgreens. Oh, I know!

AARP Medicare part D was down for most of the day. Guess who processes them? Walgreens!

Come on guys, get your shit together. I have to pay about 10 cents per transmission and I really hate having to transmit about 10 times per Rx because your servers have shit the bed. You're probably taking a cue from Argus arent you?

To add fuel to the fire, I saw this on the int0rweb:

http://www.grassrootsrx.org/node/165

Now for those of you out there who want the cliff-note version, here ya go:

Basically Walgreens sent out a pity letter a few months ago to most of the independant pharmacies in the country. I got one, my friends got one, everyone got one. The letter basically stated that if you wanted out because of shitty Medicare part D reimbursements, Walgreens will happily buy your business, blah blah blah.

Guess who's on the top of shitty and late reimbursements? WHI (Walgreens Health Initative) who processes for AARP. Hmm, the plot thickens. So let me paint the picture here:

WHI gives low/late reimbursements while a sister company (Walgreens) sends these "we'll help ya out if you sell out to us" letters. Sort of like if the oil company offers to buy your car for $20 bucks because fuel that they produce is $10 a gallon.

Now comes the million dollar question: For Rx's filled by a walgreens store that are processed by WHI, are the reimbursements higher than your local independant pharmacy? I believe to avoid a "conflict of interest" lawsuit, there has to be some division between the retail Walgreens and WHI. Agreed?

These are some tough questions, and I hope an official Walgreens or WHI rep can get to grassrootsrx.org to give them some info to make them look like less-douches.