Walmart: Bringing price competition to primary healthcare?

Something to watch - Walmart delivers low cost primary healthcare to the poor (WSJ):

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. pushed down prices for some generic prescription drugs to just $4 eight years ago, setting a new industry standard. Now it is trying to do the same for seeing a doctor.

Wal-Mart now operates a dozen clinics in rural Texas, South Carolina and Georgia and has increased its expectation for openings this year to 17. On Friday, a Walmart Care Clinic opened in Dalton, Ga., six months after Walmart U.S., the retailer’s biggest unit, entered the business of providing primary health care.

An office visit costs $40, which Walmart U.S. says is about half the industry standard, and just $4 for Walmart U.S. employees and family members with the company’s insurance. A pregnancy test costs just $3, and a cholesterol test $8. A typical retail clinic offers acute care only. But a Walmart Care Clinic also treats chronic conditions such as diabetes. (Walmart U.S. also leases space in its stores to 94 clinics owned by others that set their own pricing.)

“It was very important to us that we establish a retail price in the health-care industry because price leadership matters to us,” said Jennifer LaPerre, a Walmart U.S. senior director responsible for health and wellness, in an interview.

Walmart U.S. hasn’t yet decided whether to roll out the clinics nationally. It so far has limited itself to markets where people are uninsured or underinsured, have a high rate of chronic diseases or struggle to get access to medical care, as well as places where it has a large number of employees. About 40% of the patients seen at the clinics so far don’t have a primary-care provider, Ms. LaPerre said.