Walgreens has decided to give a helping hand by offering unemployed and uninsured individuals free access to its clinics. "Take Care Healh Systems," the Walgreens-owned company that runs these free clinics, offers its services in 342 locations. However, not all individuals (and not all illnesses) qualify for these free services. Individuals had to have lost their jobs on or after March 31st of this year and needed to have gone to a Take Care Health clinic some time during the last year. Individals must be eilgible for unemployment benefits, and they need to exhibit only minor illnesses. This means that you cannot show up to the clinic with a broken leg and expect to get a cast for free. Only things such as warts, cold sores, splinters, burns and minor cuts qualify. If you want a physical examination, you must be willing to pay the fees, which start at $60.
Although I commend Walgreens' efforts, I feel that there are some other motives at work here. Walgreens may just be trying to help those in need, but I highly doubt that. Self-interest must be at work here to some degree. The free clinics serve as advertisement for Walgreens, and those unemployed individuals who end up visiting the clinics also end up going to Walgreens to buy other goods. Walgreens knows that it can make a profit out of these individuals, so it doesn't hesitate to do so. What do you guys think? Is this just a gimmick to earn money, or is Walgreens genuinely concerned about the public's well-being? Check out this website for more information regarding this project: http://health.usnews.com/blogs/on-health-and-money/2009/04/01/walgreens-clinics-offer-free-medical-care-for-unemployed-uninsured-workers.html
4 comments:
This is intersting, I hadn't heard anything at all about it, but I definitely agree that it is a way for Walgreens to make money, but that is the purpose of all coroprations, they are all trying to do that.
And also the things they are offering seem to be barely anything anyways. Cold sores, splinters, burns and minor? There's no cure for cold sores right? They just go away on their own, and I'm pretty sure I can take care of splinters and cuts without professional assistance, and burns? Well I guess they have to be pretty minor.... I don't think that many people if any are going to seriously benefit from this.
I think this is relatively clever on Walgreen's part from a profit standpoint as Anastasia said and it improves their reputation in the eyes of the average american since they don't tend to look past the headlines for the facts beneath them. Also, they are providing "aid" however minute it may be, I don't know how many people there are out there who really can't afford band-aids or anti-bacterial cream, but hopefully this will offer them a sliver of hope, and at the very least they won't be complaining with ear and sinus infections on top of their economic woes, it'll be just one less thing to worry about.
I think since people aren't spending as much as they used too because of the economy, walgreens decided to offer this free aid for their own benefit. It seems like they want to attract people through their services for their own profit. Like Anastasia said they must be doing this for self-interest. The free clinics advertise walgreens and through this technique they probably hope to get more buyers to shop at walgreens.
Walgreen's is a corporation and especially at a time of economic recession like this, they are trying extremely hard to turn a profit so I would guess that this practice does raise revenue for them. That said, I still think that what they are doing is beneficial to the general public. If people who would usually not be willing to pay to see a doctor at a hospital are willing to go to these clinics, this could result in people who usually would not have been tested and diagnosed with diseases being diagnosed and therefore possibly cured earlier which would save extremely large amounts of money that would have been spent on emergency room bills and procedures if the disease had not been detected early.
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