Rite Aid's 'Zombie' stores take over America

Stores like Rite Aid, Walgreens, etc. primarily exist - to me at least and I think to many - to fill prescriptions. The pharmacy segment accounts for around 65-70% of Rite Aid&#x27;s revenue. I think the stores are closing because the costs of prescriptions keep going up, insurance is paying less, and the people who depend on those prescriptions are going elsewhere; Amazon, Walmart, etc.<p>If drug costs were lower then we would see more independent pharmacies, and probably more chains, but in this economy..

The modern &#x27;drug store&#x27; kinda baffles me. Compared to a grocery - worse selection of grocery items and drugs, worse laid out, at worse prices.<p>Then I wonder who they are trying to cater to. If it&#x27;s a smaller and quicker grocery experience, they&#x27;re competing with nearly every dollar store and gas station. In my experience at least, they&#x27;re often severely understaffed and not at all quicker.<p>I guess grocery and online expanding into prescriptions, and the death of print photo were a one-two punch. What&#x27;s interesting is that they&#x27;ve been declining for years, and at least to myself the consumer, don&#x27;t appear to be trying to do anything different.

It’s a shame, I have had a longstanding condition that occasionally requires medication that is not readily available in some pharmacies or that pharmacists occasionally will not even want to stock. CVS is such a miserable experience I stopped going years ago, walgreen’s much the same. My rite aid, which maybe is a local quirk, for whatever reason is extra attentive to my needs, medication refills take just a few minutes, they’ll call to remind me about things and regularly contact my doctor’s office to see if they need to stock anything. It’s been great and I’ll be really sad if it closes.

I miss the days of ma and pa Drug Stores. I and others are always fighting with stores like CVS, Walgreens all the time. Back then, no real issues.

The last few times I&#x27;ve gone to one of these pharmacy stores (Walgreens, Rite Aid, etc) they had the same inventory as my grocery store&#x27;s pharmacy section but spread out over 20x the area.

Of the remaining drug store chains in America, CVS Pharmacy might be the best positioned because it’s both largest in scale and vertically integrated with pharmacy benefit manager CVS Caremark.

&gt; <i>But the question remains, why is Rite Aid struggling so much?</i><p>Especially when it seems to me, in the Jersey suburbs outside of NYC, CVS and Walgreens are doing just fine.

Is there an actual article here? So many ads and link blocks all I managed to find was one paragraph.

In the Pacific Northwest RiteAid bought a local chain called Bartell Drugs. Since then they have really slumped. I am hoping they don&#x27;t get snuffed out with the RiteAid brand stores.

I switched to amazon pharmacy, I get 90 days delivered in mail at 1&#x2F;3rd the price, and only 1 co-pay vs 3 co-pays, and higher prices. Plus the local rite aid has had supply issues.

Does the pharmacy lobby have any role in this? Pharmacist associations have been lobbying to expand what they can do and get in on the pie, for example now able to give vaccine injections. Perhaps a solution is to automate the pharmacy process more so people can be freed up from counting pills to helping customers.