Is it even legal to dispense drugs without a pharmacist? The same way that a nurse practitioner is only legally permitted to do so much before a doctor is required.
The pharmacist “supervises” te process. Mail order has been doing this for 20 years. There used to two big ones... Caremark and Express Scripts. Now CVS, the Comcast of drugs, swallowed both up.
Hospitals do this too. In some cases 2-3 pharmacists can cover 10-12 hospitals for off shift dispensing needs.
With the black horse cavalry running the country, we’re going to see lots of M&A activity like this.
Pharmacists must directly supervise dispensing. Many hospitals use a central-fill pharmacy where the prescriptions are filled for many hospitals.
The problem with these mergers is they allow health plans that further disadvantage other pharmacies or providers. Once those other options are eliminated we’ll see prices rise. Do people actually want the Home Depot’s of healthcare rather than the equivalent of the local hardware store? We’ll see I guess.
Optical insurance has been like this for a long time. For example, EyeMed is owned by Luxottica, who owns the majority of eye wear retailers in the USA.
Evidence suggests that they've used their monopoly to artificially inflate prices quite dramatically.
No, it isn't. I worked for CVS for about 8 years, though not as a pharmacist. Some of this information could be Indiana-specific, however:
A brick and mortar pharmacy must have a pharmacist on-site to dispense drugs. Not only are they supposed to do a final check on prescriptions filled, but they must be available for patient question and sometimes medicine requires advice from a pharmacist before it can be dispensed. In addition, there are some stricter laws for certain controlled medications and these checks must be done by a pharmacist. If the pharmacist gets sick or in a car accident on the way to work, the pharmacy can't legally open (they can section the pharmacy off with its own locks to keep the convenience store open).
