Wal-mart’s rapidly growing $4 plan

Wal-mart’s $4 generic program is growing – more stores, more states, and more scripts are now covered. The latest information has the giant retailer’s cheap program operating in over 3000 in-store pharmacies in 32 states. And, the list of drugs has expanded to include 331 prescriptions.
I’ve received some flak from readers who seem to object to my past posts questioning why Wal-mart is doing this.

Their beef is that they don’t particularly care why Wal-mart is doing this, as long as it saves them money.
Its great that some folks are saving money on the Wal-mart plan.
I’m more focused on and interested in the larger implications – for other pharmacies, for drug prices in general, for health care costs, and Wal-mart’s apparent interest in becoming a health care provider. According to Wal-Mart, the list of drugs covered under the plan now includes 14 of the top 20 meds; I haven’t seen any outside corroboration of this so if you have please send it on.
If that is the case, it marks a major improvement in the original plan, which only covered 2 of the top 20 drugs. Here’s the original list.
I’ll keep watching for downstream impacts on manufacturers, competitors, pharma benefit plan design and the like.