October 16, 2010 
“We have more than 60,000 drug stores in America, 38,000 grocery stores, and about 13,000 McDonalds. How difficult is it for someone to find a McDonalds hamburger if they want one?…Not hard. So why do we need 64,000 drug stores within our network?”
— Michael Jacobs, national clinical practice leader at Buck Consultants, told AIS’s DRUG BENEFIT NEWS.
Enabling Healthy Decisions 
I agree, there is no need for 64,000 drug stores in a network. No question, the medication distribution channel has way too much capacity and is in need of serious correction. This over capacity can only have very real and negative downstream price consequences for consumers.
Sounds like Walmart’s message is getting through.
“There are over 60,000 pharmacies in the U.S. That’s close to twice the number of supermarkets and five times the number of McDonald’s restaurants…nobody would argue that it’s difficult to get a Big Mac.” (Source: Access Based Network Design: A Walmart Low Price Network White Paper, June 2010.
Download link on Drug Channels:
http://www.drugchannels.net/2010/06/exclusive-walmarts-pitch-for-smaller.html
Adam