Lower Wal-Mart Rx Prices: Threat or Menace?

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Lower Wal-Mart Rx Prices: Threat or Menace?

Wednesday, September 27th, 2006 | Media Behaving Badly |

Alex Tabarrok asks Why Can’t We Have a Better Press Corps?

Kathleen Day’s article in the Washington Post on Wal-Mart’s plan to offer a $4 price for many generic pharmaceuticals is a classic example, practically a caricature, of anti-market, anti-big-business bias. Here with emphases added are some choice quotes from the front page article:

Retailing giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc., known for forcing prices down to dominate nearly every market it enters, said yesterday that it would sell nearly 300 generic drugs for $4 per prescription…

Using its might as the nation’s largest retailer and its legendary ability to force suppliers to cut prices to the bone, the company will begin the $4 price program in its 65 stores in the Tampa area today…

…the program has the potential to transform the $230 billion prescription-drug business the way Wal-Mart has transformed other industries, including groceries and toys, where its aggressive pricing has forced some competitors out of business and allowed it to dominate entire categories of merchandise.

In the entire article there is not a single positive mention from the reporter of consumer benefits or Wal-Mart productivity. It’s not until inside the fold that you even get a hint of consumer benefits and then it’s in the context of an absurdly biased attack on Wal-Mart.

Imagine how the reporter would have written the story if the price reductions were because of a government entitlement program, or an endowment by a billionaire. The coverage would be entirely positive. Yet if capitalism and efficiency create surplus value for consumers, it’s apparently nothing to be happy about.

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