Three cheers for Wal-Mart for offering cheap generic drugs:

Wal-Mart announced today that it will start a test program in Florida, where it will sell generic prescription drugs for $4 for a 30-day supply. The test will start tomorrow in 65 Tampa Bay-area stores and is to expand to the whole state by January.

In a statement, CEO Lee Scott says the world's largest retailer intends to "take the program to as many states as possible next year."

Why is this important? Wal-Mart is doing what the Bush Adminstration refused to do under the new Medicare drug plan. They are using their buying power to drive down the prices, the same way Canada does. At $4 a month, these drugs are probably a better buy than you can get through your new Medicare insurance. So much for that trillion dollar waste of money.

And another good point, Wal-Mart is offering these prices to anyone, insurance or not.

Right now, this just applies to generic drugs. But what if Wal-Mart were able to do the same thing with other drugs? If they can, then we could probably scrap the whole Medicare prescription system and just send people to Wal-Mart, and save about a trillion dollars. over the next 10 years.

Wal-Mart gets a lot of bad press for driving out small businesses and it anti-union activities. But I have to hand it to them for this. Can't wait until they roll out the service here.