Dr. Walmart

It looks like Walmart wants to be in the healthcare business.    NPR reports that Walmart "wants to dominate a growing part of the healthcare market, offering a range of medical services from basic prevention to management of chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease".  Remember, it started with little quick care clinics and now they want to do chronic disease management.  Weird, huh?   I wonder if it is going to work.?  Walmart is good at what they do.  They sell cheap wares because they squeeze suppliers with bulk purchasing.  How that carries over to healthcare is beyond me but if anyone can pull it off it would be them.  It is reported that they intend to build a national, integrated, low-cost primary care healthcare platform and become the largest provider of primary healthcare services in the nation.  In a shopping store?  One can imagine the payer mix of their customers!  Something tells me this could be Walmart's Netflix moment.  Or, better yet, Walmart's Waterloo.

Interestingly enough, Walmart has backed off and are now denying they want to dominate the healthcare system and the information put out by NPR was "overwritten and incorrect".   Not buying it.