Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc (WBA)

[big-yank]

For whom the bell tolls...

The next salvo will be when Walmart extends its price-match-guarantee to Pharmacy and publicizes it. The Costco/HEB lowest common denominator Rx price will become the retail industry standard and mailorder will be even less.

As ACA impacts pharmacy Rx's, nobody is going to reward Walgreens with a higher reimbursement than others because they have a brow bar, barristas, sadly-wilted produce or a sushi bar. It will all boil down to cost, and the Express Scripts debacle just proves all the more that the self-serving WAG corporate blustering about convenience and customer-centric-retailing matters not when the retail prescription price is bloated, non-competitive or denied by insurance if the consumer chooses Walgreens over less costly alternatives that are clearly and readily available.

Remember when Wasson, Miquelon and Crawford all but guaranteed huge customer retention during the ESRX dispute? That clearly was a fable. Just like all the billions of investment dollars in home infusion, clinics, online acquisitions and drugchain acquisitions like Duane Reade have had huge, promised outcomes by mnanagement and virtually ZERO accountability for results after completion.

There is "A Day of Reckoning" on the horizon and you know my predictions as to outcome. C'mon, Skinner, prove to us that you didn't exhaust all your testosterone when you fired "The Hamburglar"!

GLTA,

Yank