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In case your favourite pharmacy has disappeared and you’re having hassle finding a brand new place to get your prescriptions crammed, you aren’t alone. The Nice Pharmacy Fade is spreading to neighborhoods everywhere in the metropolis, the county, the state and the nation.
There are a variety of things driving the closures of pharmacies. A giant change got here when the nationwide chains, Walgreens, CVS and Ceremony Support, started gobbling up local, independent pharmacies. Ceremony Aids’ takeover of Seattle’s venerable Bartell’s drugstores was particularly unsettling. When Ceremony Support lately declared chapter and introduced a whole lot of pharmacy closures, together with many on this area, it grew to become clear that even the massive chains can not escape the challenges which have completed off so lots of the mom-and-pop operations.
Competitors from Walmart and Amazon, staffing shortages and opioid lawsuits have damage enterprise. Aggressive shoplifting has develop into epidemic. And, in keeping with the pharmacies, even harder to deal with than petty thievery is the massive share of earnings drained off by the large pharmacy profit administration corporations that take care of the pursuits of insurance coverage corporations, Medicare Half D plans and huge employers.
As at all times, the poorest communities are the toughest hit — in some circumstances changing into “pharmacy deserts.” However the desert is spreading and nobody has but found out the right way to reverse the development.
See extra of David Horsey’s cartoons at: st.news/davidhorsey
View different syndicated cartoonists at: st.news/cartoons
Editor’s notice: Seattle Occasions Opinion now not appends remark threads on David Horsey’s cartoons. Too many feedback violated our community policies and reviewing the handfuls that had been flagged as inappropriate required an excessive amount of of our restricted employees time. You may remark by way of a Letter to the Editor. Please e mail us at letters@seattletimes.com and embody your full identify, deal with and phone quantity for verification solely. Letters are restricted to 200 phrases.
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