The Down Side of In-Store Clinics

Why would you open up 400 health clinics in your store if it was not your intention to put other health clinics OUT OF BUSINESS?

Jane

The goal of EVERY enterprise is to gain as much business as possible. Anyone who tells you they are not trying to increase their market share is lying. Even your Gods, Target & Costco, are trying to increase their market share at Wal-Mart’s expense. That said, I doubt very seriously if Wal-Mart plans on, intends or hopes to put traditional health clinics out of business. Of course, if traditional clinics (which charge $250 for a visit & an x-ray, with the reading of the x-ray billed seperately) lose customers to the in house clinics at Wal-Mart, that is a sure sign that customers prefer the Wal-Mart clinics. You see, it does not matter if say I prefer Bloomingdale’s over Nordstrom’s if I shop at Nordstrom’s. I’m sure that the only vote or opinion that matters to a business is the one where you vote with your dollars.

Something you don’t seem to understand, Jane (and you are not alone in this regard) is that customers are free to shop wherever they like. Customers, not companies, decide which stores will get their business. Wal-Mart cannot force a single person to spend a single dollar at their store. America could easily put Wal-Mart out of business in a week. If every American stayed away from Wal-Mart for a week, they would wreck the company. THIS is how you hurt a company you don’t like-by taking your dollars elsewhere. What you can’t understand, and what irks liberals, is that the American public chooses things with which you do not agree. You are shocked that not only do most Americans not think like you, but you are a small minority. You hate the fact that consumers choose Wal-Mart over your stores of choice and you hate that viewers choose Fox News over the now defunct joke that was Air America.

Liberals are so arrogant in their belief that they are superior beings. It is a shock to them that they are a tiny minority of the American populace.

Who would go to Wal-Mart for a Doctor

Jim-

It looks like they finally mentioned it…

Someone,

Yes, indeed—and in recoginition, I did add a footnote to my “Four Days Later” article at my blog…

JB

Jane,

If health care is ever going to affordable those places that charge several hundred dollars are either going to have to change or be supplanted by something better.

I see this as a “have your cake and eat it too” situation for Bentonville. Lease out space to medical entrepreneurs while striking a deal to provide clinic access instead of health insurance.

Win-Win for the Beast!

What’s actually happening is they don’t accept insurance, so it’s every cut throat.  Reasoning:  You go in for a throat culture, pay x amount, go to your local pharmacy (ie-WALMART) ding-double the exposure.

KenV,
Win-Win for the beast indeed - oh yeah, and also the general public, who now has greater access to health care at lower prices. Of course, all you focus on the perceived lack of health care for the poor WM workers.
Get bent.

Ya, right!  If they are the only store for miles then I guess consumers can go elsewhere..ya, sure!

This company needs to be destroyed and our jobs brought back to this country!  Greed is destroying our way of life and its the commies who are winning!

Headbanger!,

“Ya, right!  If they are the only store for miles then I guess consumers can go elsewhere..ya, sure!

Ya, it sure is too bad that in this day and age, people can’t go more than a few miles away from their home, isn’t it?

“This company needs to be destroyed”

Well, let’s see, if it is the only store for miles and people can’t travel elsewhere, what will they do when the company is destroyed?  I think you have been banging your head a little too hard and have scrambled your brains!!

“our jobs brought back to this country”

And, how do you that, pray tell?

All we can hope, hypocrisy, is that Wal-Mart clinics are more proficient than their TLE’s.

I want to take this rare opportunity to agree with Someone and Jim in their chiding of WMW for the delay in posting this story. There are lots of possible reasons but I only hope its not because, at first glance, it looks positive for Wal-Mart.

When it comes to this current bunch in Bentonville, almost anything they do turns into a “give ‘em enough rope and they’ll hang themselves” situation.  Odds are whatever “positive” steps Wal-Mart seems to take will be more than offset by botched implementation or because of unintended consequences.

I’ll give you a recent example. Wal-Mart announces promoting energy-saving flourescent light bulbs. Positive! But, oops, scientists point out that these bulbs contain mercury and without an energy-devouring recycling program, the use of these bulbs in the numbers Wal-Mart is talking about will cause serious environmental damage.  You’d think the world’s largest corporation would check stuff like that out before shoothing off their mouth.

Or the Jobs Opportunity program which died on the vine due to lack of funding. (They never intended for that one to fly.)

The point being, give ‘em rope, WMW, Bentonville won’t disappoint you.

As an addendum to Dr. Feinsilver’s article on Cuba’s Medical Diplomacy, please note that in August the Bush Administration announced its intention to lure to the U.S. some of the 15 to 20 thousand doctors now providing medical aid mainly in Venezuela and Bolivia by making it easier for Cuban doctors participating in the island’s medical program abroad to gain refugee status in the U.S. In her report, COHA Senior Research Fellow Julie Feinsilver analyzes the multiple aspects of Cuban medical diplomacy.
A version of this article originally appeared in Foreign Affairs en Español Vol. 6 (Octubre-Diciembre 2006), pp. 81-94.

http://www.coha.org/2006/10/30/cuban-medical-diplomacy-when-the-left-has-got-it-right/

Wonder who WalMart will have as subcontracted physicians in these ‘minute clinics’ as the ‘low wage’ leader continues into the future with ongoing hostility to any American labor. Always remember that everything is about the ‘love of money’ first with the slobs in Bentonville no matter how out of balance things will become.

Wait until WalMart gets visas for training ‘low wage labor’ at/in U.S. stores from the Bush administration to import temp workers/labor from China on ‘training’ assignments inside the U.S.

SDV

In a true free market, one wouldn’t need the AMA’s approval to practice medicine. In this country, unfortunately, we’ve taken the people who work in a field and given them power of who else can enter this field. This would be like permitting Target to decide who can open a store and where, the specifications, the requirements, the licensing, the fees, the required training and the continuing education. Doesn’t make sense for a company to control its’ field, does it? Why, then, do we permit labor unions (of which the AMA is the most powerful example) decide who will work in their field?

Time and time again, it has been proven that foreign doctors are NOT inferior to US doctors nor would for profit med schools produce inferior doctors. Decades ago, the AMA, fearing competition, shouted that there would be too many doctors in coming years. This was a problem, how? Oh, it would have created too much competition and driven down the high salaries of current doctors. Now, we find that we have a doctor shortage. The AMA does not permit new non-profit or ANY for profit med schools to open and it strictly limits the class sizes at its approved schools. Then, it requires something called “Board Certification” which is another step to limiting competition. Why can’t doctors be like contractors? Get a business license and hang our your shingle. If you are not “Board Certified” or properly trained, patients have the right to not frequent your business. Let’s bring some competition into the medical, legal & construction fields instead of requiring a license to trade a service for money.

As to these in store clinics, I say good for Wal-Mart. All you anti-Wal-Mart people talk about is unisured workers, etc. I will assume that many of Wal-Mart’s customers have no health insurance. This will provide a place for checkups and it can be instrumental in the important practice of preventative medicine. Employees and customers can get checked out without missing work. Whether or not people have health insurance is irrelevant if they have convenient access to quality, low priced health care.

Ken V,

“Odds are whatever “positive” steps Wal-Mart seems to take will be more than offset by botched implementation or because of unintended consequences....I’ll give you a recent example. Wal-Mart announces promoting energy-saving flourescent light bulbs. Positive! But, oops, scientists point out that these bulbs contain mercury and without an energy-devouring recycling program, the use of these bulbs in the numbers Wal-Mart is talking about will cause serious environmental damage.  You’d think the world’s largest corporation would check stuff like that out before shoothing off their mouth.

I don’t think you can blame this one all on Wal-Mart, environment groups push the ‘green concept’ and everyone is falling all over each other now to promote anything that looks like it is going to help.  Look at this example: Ethanol: Use corn to produce fuel to save the athmosphere, positive, right?  Oops, corn prices go up, meat prices go up and the ‘poor’ and the economy are hurt by it!!

These are just 2 examples of how people who think they are doing something good, but when enacted, cause harm!!  Kind of like what we have been saying about what this site and the anti Wal-Mart people are promoting!!  That is why I pushed so hard to get someone to explain how that Good Idea of a ‘living wage’ would work in the real world, it would end up as another OOPS!!

Bob,

Regarding those compact light bulbs, I’m not hanging Wal-Mart on this one, because a lot of the different “green groups” were touting the environmental benefits (not to mention the cost savings) of these bulbs weeks before WM jumped in the game.  As I consider myself an enviromentally-friendly kind of guy, I went to my local Costco, and bought myself a multi-pack of ‘em!

As with all things, there are always be postives and negatives to just about everything we do.  Me?  I don’t plan on losing any sleep on this one…

JB

Jim,

Just as a comparisan, what did you pay for them?  I bought an 8 pack of 13W/60W (GE) bulbs for $12.63, at Sam’s this weekend!!

“Me?  I don’t plan on losing any sleep on this one…”

Me neither, besides, these bulbs last for years and there is only a very small amount of mercury in them!!  Not to mention that we’ve been using fluorescent lights for years and they all contain mercury!!

Nick,

“Why, then, do we permit labor unions (of which the AMA is the most powerful example) decide who will work in their field?”

Another point is, the AMA protects the “quack” doctors as well.  My wife once was sent to a doctor (the company doctor), after surgery and spending 2 weeks in traction at the hospital, to get a release to return to work, [she did have a ‘not to return to work for 30 days restriction’, from the doctors (2) who were taking care of her], but the company required their doctor to look at her.  When she went in to see him, without even examining her, he said, “Your problem is you’ve been drinking too much coffee”, she replied that she didn’t drink coffee, to which he said, “Then you are eating too much white bread, you can return to work tomorrow”, and this guy was okayed by the AMA.

I point at an issue and you guys look at my finger.

Let’s get real here for a moment. Wal-Mart is going to put clinics in their stores. Clinics designed to appeal to lower income individuals. Am I being overly pessimistic to imagine the patients at these clinics looking like they just stepped out of the latest episode of Cops?

Is this the final abandonment of Wal-Mart’s futile attempt to go “upscale”? Are any of these clinics to be in the stores with new fake wood floors? Or is this just another instance of Bentonville bi-polarity?

Wouldn’t you love to get a look at the insurance/liability agreements being hammered out between Wal-mart and these “other organizations”.

“Are any of these clinics to be in the stores with new fake wood floors?”

I was just in my local Safeway store and they have just “upgraded” to those same new fake wood floors.  If Safeway can go upscale I guess Walmart can do the same.

Bob,

I paid roughly the same for the same wattage/number of bulbs.  The only difference was mine were made by Philips (I am guessing Philips is as exclusive to Costco as GE is to Sam’s Club on lightbulbs).

After this “news flash” broke, I did think about it, and came to the conclusion that 7-8 years should be more than enough time to get an economical recycling program in place for these things.

Mike,

Safeway’s effort to go upscale is referred-to (internally) as the “Lifestyle” format, which has been instrumental to their recent successes (not including Dominick’s stores in the Chiacgo area).  From my point of view, it’s the latest “in” thing in retailing, and I am sure we will see something completely different at Wal-Mart, and the rest, in about 7-10 years…

JB

I wonder how they plan to prevent cross contamination. Do you want to shop in the same building as an endless stream of sick people coughing, sneezing, touching everything?  External entry, maybe?

The last person that tried on that blouse may have been...ummm...sick!

But I’m sure Bentonville has thought this through.

Ken V,

“an endless stream of sick people coughing, sneezing”

So, are you saying that this clinic thing at Wal-Mart, is going to go over <B>Big Time<B> and people will be coming in an endless stream to use it?

Not sure what the big deal is about instore banks/medical clinics.
Walmart is so far behind the times. Our stores have had banks and medical clinics in them for years.

R E M E M B E R
J O N Q U I E R E
Q U E B E C
Home of Walmart Worker Abuse

...people will be coming in an endless stream to use it?

Oh, yeah, Bob, I see an endless tide of sick and/or injured poor people who don’t know the difference between an ER and a clinic.

Price Rollback on Stab Wounds!

I’m fantasizing, of course, but I can see some real potential for this clinic idea to spin out of control.

Go for it, Bentonville! With your implementation record, this could be a disaster even if it is a good idea.