Walgreens is moving to become the "place" to go for healthcare. They are pitching their in-store clinics and company health centers to government and corporate employers nationwide under the brand of "Complete Care and Well-Being". The participating employees can get everything from a check up, dental work, and discounted prescriptions. They even would be able to get 15% off private-label items such as toothpaste and diapers. Wait a minute. It sure seems like they are just trying to get patients into the store so they can sell them the other items. Isn't that a conflict of interest? Where is the self-referral laws against that? Anyway, Walgreens is positioning this as way to control healthcare costs. They have been buying up retail clinic and work site companies (Take Care Health Systems, I-trax, Whole Health Management) for the last two years to prepare for this. I am not a fan of the fractionating of health care which retail clinics lead to. My hunch, however, is that these places are losing a lot of money. Maybe when the economic news was better these clinics could have all the time they needed to build up slowly and succeed. I think a lot of the big companies sponsoring these clinics are getting a little twitchy and doing whatever they can to hedge their bets. Walgreens attempt at making deals with big employers is an end run that takes the choice of care out of the employees and puts into their bosses hands again. I can just see a major company telling their workers that they can see their regular family doc or internist but it will cost a lot more than seeing the NP, PA, or "Doc-in-the-Box" at Walgreens. Maybe it is time to take the healthcare out of employer's control? That is unless you want 15% off your condoms or Budweiser every time you see your healthcare provider?