A Retail Clinic for Healthy People

This is part of the model of the future. A variation on the retail clinics that are springing up all over the country.

I have friends that have used retail clinics to get health care for simple illnesses that are being passed around from person to person. This kind of sickness can be taken care of with a simple $4 prescription from Walmart. They charge you $25 for the exam, diagnosis, and prescription.

clipped from blogs.wsj.com Health care would be a great business if it weren’t for all the sick people. Richard McCauley, MD, may have fixed that. “If you cough, you’re in the wrong place,” he told the Ventura County Star His store, WellnessMart, sells things like screening tests, checkups and vaccinations. McCauley doesn’t take health insurance, but he’d be glad to sell you a health insurance policy. Nutrition counseling for a month costs $40, and vaccination for hepatitis A costs $89, the County Star says. Critics have suggested that many new health care businesses aim to skim off the simplest, healthiest patients, leaving complex, sicker patients for others to deal with. McCauley’s business certainly fits the bill. But he argues that the cost and difficulty of seeing the doctor means many healthy people go without basic preventive care. “Why is it that sick people and healthy people go to the same places for care?” he says.