Retail Watchers

CVS in talks to buy Aetna. I guess they have to grow to compete with Walgreen's and there are no more acquisitions in the pharmacy arena.

$69B is a heck of a lot of money. Makes Whole Foods and Safeway acquisitions look like peanuts.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-aetn ... SKBN1E2242

First, a retail drugstore chain acquiring an insurance company specializing in health, medical, and prescription coverage appears to be mismatched.

Second, Aetna's members could be restricted to fill prescriptions only at CVS.

Knight wrote: ↑December 10th, 2017, 7:44 am First, a retail drugstore chain acquiring an insurance company specializing in health, medical, and prescription coverage appears to be mismatched.

Second, Aetna's members could be restricted to fill prescriptions only at CVS.

The retail drugstore business is only a blip under the 'CVS Health' business, but it still seems a bit monopolistic for my liking. I work at another large company that uses Aenta and many people are kind of concerned as we currently have one of the best health care plans in the industry, but we are also sort of a competitor to CVS's pharmacy business.

I fear the number of pharmacies in Aetna's pharmacy network (pharmacies that accept Aetna plans) would reduce significantly.

I have worked in pharmacy before. I have seen networks change to plans not being accepted anymore, and saw pharmacy customers take their prescriptions elsewhere as an effect.

What I see with this is a pharmacy monopoly. You have Aetna, you must use CVS for ALL of your prescriptions. And you'll pay the premium price for it. You can't go anywhere else except CVS. If you go to Walgreens, you'll pay a higher price. If you use Walmart, higher. This is bad any way you look at it.

wnetmacman wrote: ↑December 12th, 2017, 12:01 pm What I see with this is a pharmacy monopoly. You have Aetna, you must use CVS for ALL of your prescriptions. And you'll pay the premium price for it. You can't go anywhere else except CVS. If you go to Walgreens, you'll pay a higher price. If you use Walmart, higher. This is bad any way you look at it.

I’m unclear how this is any different from, say, Kaiser Permanente? If you want to fill your prescription elsewhere then select a different plan.

Are Walgreen's, Walmart, Kroger, Albertson's, and Publix rolling out competing pharmacy insurance providers in the future?

lola42 wrote: ↑December 12th, 2017, 1:41 pmI’m unclear how this is any different from, say, Kaiser Permanente? If you want to fill your prescription elsewhere then select a different plan.

Because Kaiser Permanente is largely isolated to the West Coast. CVS runs somewhat nationwide, covering about 80% of the population.