$4 for a month's supply of generics

Wal-Mart's announcement last week was big. Big enough to influence the prices of drugstores downward by 7-9% on that day.

I asked a family friend who's a CVS pharmacist today in passing what he thought about Wal-Mart's plan. He said that his company isn't worried, largely because he believes they won't be able to sustain it. A pharmacist will fill about 10 prescriptions per hour and charge about $40 per hour in salary. So at $4 per prescription, they won't be making much margin. Or so his argument was.

Furthermore, pharmacists won't work more than they're accustomed to -- and so there won't be higher volume of sales to offset the loss in margins. And many consumers will value convenience over price since it will now take hours in his mind for a Wal-Mart shopper to get her prescription filled.

But even he admitted he doesn't know exactly how things will play out, and conceded that if Wal-Mart is successful, then the market (i.e., his company and others) will have to adjust.

It will be fun to watch on the sidelines if the innovations Wal-Mart has used to lower prices on many goods not just in its stores but across the board will allow the company to sustain generics and their current system of dispensing medicines -- or if they'll have to give up, or even come up with new innovations to keep the low prices rolling.