Walmart Denies Plans for Health Care Network, Even as Clinics Thrive

Walmart (NYSE: WMT) said that the press was mistaken when several media reported the world’s largest retailer would create a national medical clinic system within its stores. The denial hardly matters. Walmart is already on its way to becoming a major health care provider.

NPR, among other media, said Walmart was at the beginning of a program to offer health care services across the country. Walmart responded, “The RFI statement of intent is overwritten and incorrect. We are not building a national, integrated, low-cost primary care health care platform.” RFI means a request for information from the company.

Walmart probably touches more “patients” than any health care provider in America. Its Medicare Part D prescription-drug plan, a venture built with Humana (NYSE: HUM), offers generic drugs for as little as $1 after a deductible is satisfied. Humana maintains informational kiosks in about 3,000 Walmart stores nationwide. Walmart operates a network of hundreds of pharmacies. These offer $4 prescriptions for many drugs. The affordability of these programs has already made Walmart a de facto provider of critical health care services in most regions in the United States.

Walmart’s PR machines do not want it to appear that the retailer’s health care plans are too ambitious, although they already are. Statements about plans for aggressive moves more deeply into the industry would only bring objections from mainstream health care companies, and perhaps politicians in Washington. Walmart already has watched its ambitions to become national bank destroyed by a backlash from that industry. The company learned a lesson. The best way to enter a large and powerful industry is to do it as quietly as possible.

Walmart is well along the way to becoming a one-stop shop for patients other than those who have to be hospitalized. One day the health care industry will wake up and see Walmart looming over it with a long list of services available to the millions of people who go to its stores.

Douglas A. McIntyre