When I went to pick up a prescription at CVS last week, the Pharmacist said she was there ALL BY HERSELF. She was filling prescriptions, answering the phone, and tending to customers at both the drive-thru and the counter. No one should have to work like that.
Tell her to quit. It's not worth it for her to give up her sanity for this company. She should open a consulting business to speak to people face to face about their medicine, not be a dispensing monkey.
This is everywhere nowadays. Im a waitress, and work with a skeleton crew. I’m a host, busser, dishwasher, and a server all at the same time. Because of me working four different positions I definitely make mistakes I normally wouldn’t if they gave us needed staffing. Capitalism is starting to eat itself.
Is it just me or is the main problem in the US that every company wants to squeeze every penny out of the system no matter what just to please the shareholders which leads to a whole lot of absurdity... ?
The problem is it's illegal for a company to do anything else. Companies are legally required to put the profits of shareholders over anything else, or they risk getting sued.
Yeah... once a company goes public it's shit. Because it's not "public" it's held by VCs and wealthy investors who will breath down any companies neck for nothing but profits
Part of why CVS is so bad is because the government for some reason let them buy up Aetna, one of the largest insurance companies in the US. I still have NO CLUE how the government didn't see the blatantly obvious conflict of interest of a pharmacy owning the insurance company and negotiating with themselves on how they reimburse themselves for prescription drugs.
That was in 2018 (wildly wrong in the video) and announced in 2017. What party was in control of the entire government in 2017? It should be obvious. It should also be obvious you should never vote for them.
I worked at CVS in the past the problem is they believe that one guy can do the job of 3 people . This isn’t just a problem in pharmacy but also at front store. I was constantly expected to man the cashier , vacuum the front isles, face them , put throwbacks away and stock the front isles . I would help one customer then vacuum for a second and another would show up . It was so annoying running back and fourth. When I worked overnight truck I tried to ask the district manager for time and a half . She told me no. I said then what’s the point of working overnight destroying my health if I get the same wage. She said the incentive is I get more hours. This was such a scum company.
I'm convinced that a lot of companies saw what happened during covid, said to themselves, 'wow, people will put up with this?' and then just ran with it.
I’ve been saying the exact same thing, especially in regards to everything being so expensive now. These corporations / companies realized they could get away with it, and haven’t stopped since.
Yep we have fast food restaurants near me that still won't open the dining lobbies because they can just put two employees on shift to handle the drive thru and door dash orders
Yes Covid will go down as one of the worst things that ever happened to this country. Marc my word we’re already starting to slowly see all the repercussions.
@@kathleen5296they realized they’ll elect Trump and never fights back against any injustice. As long as Americans have some other class or ethnicity to feel holier than
It's almost as if an essential service like medication fulfillment should never be handled by institutions whose main goal is profit over being a public service.
Most hospitals even if open to the public are run as for profit institutions instead of as an Essential Service Subsidised by State and Federal Governments which they are @@HoustonRacewayKid
We need UHC. Health care should be just like the fire department and police department. I remember when our hospital had a pharmacy and it was nice. After getting released you would stop by the pharmacy on the way out and get all your meds and bandages.
@ Yes I think I said that in some video. When trump initiates tariffs on China, and prices go up at big box stores that sell cheap Chinese products, Walmart and others will lose their business model. I am sad that people care more about saving a small amount of money vs supporting their country. I mainly buy from thrift stores and yard sales, I only buy insulin and milk from Walmart.
I work in healthcare and it’s particularly troubling to me every day how risky it is for patient safety. It’s stressful and very suboptimal. I remember the days when we had proper staffing, now it’s like one nurse for 40 patients. How is that even legal? Healthcare shouldn’t be for profit imo
@@PeachysMom I think a lot of it is to keep people demoralized and without energy, time, and money to actually fight these injustices; it's a vicious downward spiral. They want everyday people to be their slaves in every sense of the word. We can't own homes, we can't work jobs comfortably. It's just slavery.
That's so true. You end up working at a place and they lose workers but they won't replace them. They realize they can save money by making a few workers do it all. And then those few workers get burnt out/quit.
Its what monopolies do. Both political parties allowed corporations to buy their competition until we wound up with two pharmacy corporations,. Four corporations control all the meat sold in America, and that's why food is so expensive now. No matter what you need, there is a monopoly that overcharges you with no fear of being undersold by a competitor. The prices have nothing to do with cost to manufacture and deliver.
@@AV-yn4lvThese companies typically work together in semi-covert ways. For the meat industries, the big meat manufacturers look at the same pricing data and, explicitly or not, agree with each other to all sell their products at the same price to avoid competition. They are essentially circumventing anti-competition laws.
I was out of a medication I needed and it wasn’t in stock in any nearby CVS or Walgreens stores. I talked to a very helpful pharmacist at a local independent pharmacy who would be able to fill it- but it would cost $700 because the independent pharmacy wasn’t in my network. This is why monopolies or duopolies shouldn’t exist. When customers have no where else to go-companies have no incentive to offer better service. It’s a joke our government has let it go this far.
@@brgilman3334lmfao you think he’ll help you get medication???? 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 that man hates actual medicine more than someone who’s lived in a forest alone their whole life. Glad you believe in some random thought you made up good luck with that one
This is a long comment, but worth a read. Around the height of Covid, I went to a CVS and witnessed a pharmacist have a complete manic breakdown. It started when a customer in line asked the pharmacist, whom she was friendly with, how he was doing. The man exploded emotionally because he had found out that day, after he had been working double shifts for weeks, that he had been fired (over the phone no less). But they still wanted him to finish the week. When the friendly, but shaken, customer said that she was going to call the DM on his behalf, he turned his ire onto her, screaming not to call anyone. This man was having a complete mental crisis, and still had a line of frightened people to service. I HAVE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THAT! I still think about that man sometimes. I sincerely hope that he's okay.
@@OublietteTight I think people underestimate the extreme pressure employers can unload onto their staff. That guy should have had his ass kissed, instead of getting laid off. Anyway, thanks for reading my long comment!
Im a unlicensed pharmacy tech and after 2 months ive been asked (i refused) to do many things against my training, i actually got written up the other day for not finishing my tasks after i left at my scheduled time because we were understaffed and over worked, i had to catch my bus or i would be walking 2 hours home. Mistakes are being made daily because corporate is completely disconnected from the reality of pharmacy, they need to up the pay and put money into more staff. The fact they made billions yet are systems run off 2005 java script and im new and already working 3 peoples jobs for less than they get paid at mcdonalds
Thank you for your comment. I have no doubt that even though you’ve been working there only a short time, you will be missed. I hope you responded to that write up, and you make a complaint to your state labor board and submit it. Who is asking you to do things that are against your training? Management, or the overworked pharmacists? When you say “against your training”, are they asking you to violate procedures that you were taught, or are they asking you to do things that require a pharmacist license? I wish you the best in your education and career. I think your parents must be very proud of you, and. you will go far in whatever field you choose.
I used to be a licensed pharmacy tech before the C word. I quit and did not renew my license b/c I did not want to do something which I was not legally able to do. And, yes, even back then, I was asked to do things which I was not legally licensed to do. I believe that I saved lives b/c I pointed out something to a licensed pharmacist that they didn't catch, b/c they relied too much on the computer and not past training - I started working when we still had to look up things in the books, not relying on a computer. And when I decided I was done, I was more of a sales clerk than using my pharmacy training.
My father was a Pharmacist manager 10 years ago at a CVS- he did the math and in order to meet the metrics CVS was pushing, he only had 7 seconds per prescription to check the prescription and fill it. When you factor in making sure its the right drug, the right dosage for weight, has no interactions with other drugs someone is prescribed, that the customer doesn't have questions about how to take it, or has questions about complicated insurance and discounts, it's a wonder more people don't die than already do. I can't imagine it's gotten any better since
@@AS-oj3cwIf someone dies because CVS prioritizes speed and profit over letting their pharmacist make sure a prescription isn't going to kill someone, isn't that wrong? How many times have you taken a medication without consciously looking at it to make sure they put the right pill in the right bottle? How is a regular person supposed to know if two prescriptions they take might interact and kill them? More to your point- obviously sick people take meds and then some will die from their illness. But how many deaths might have been entirely preventable? I think if a company is selling you a medication that they have to make sure it's the right one.
Also why you shouldn't eat out at restaurants. They don't pay their servers so they have to wait on as many tables as possible to make some actual money. It's all turn and burn so quality and cleanliness go right out the window.
The funny thing about "understaffed"? When I worked for a pharmacy, I had a ton of hours available, but would get 4-8 hours a week and when I was scheduled it was me and a shift leader closing. We had plenty of people, it was corporate who didn't want to allow the hours for employees to work.
Probably because then they’d have to cover health insurance and have some sort of benefits package, but if they keep a bunch of people working short hours, they don’t have to do any of that
@@amber88565 - We had 14 part-time people in addition to the full-time shift leads and managers. Almost every part-time employee got between 4-12 hours a week no matter how available someone was. Someone who was available anytime was given closer to 12 hours a week while me being available weekends anytime and weekdays after 6 PM, I got mostly 4 hours a week sometimes 8 hours a week. No part-time employee was anywhere near close to the hours to qualify for benefits.
I'm not for either side currently as both have lots of flaws, but the republican party is infamous for lobbying for less and less industry regulations...it makes it easier to make profit at all cost and get away with questionable practices without much pushback
I worked at cvs for 7 years. I can confirm that everything in this video is true. Short to no staffing, impossible workloads and vaccine goals, unrealistic metrics, etc. I remember during peak covid, the pharmacist was giving a shot every 10 minutes while doing regular work with little to no help. Staff turnover was incredibly high and the management was extremely toxic
I worked there for 8. It was incredibly depressing being so consistently under-staffed, feeling like no matter how hard I worked, nothing would ever get done. Expectations constantly increased or changed, and hours were cut more and more. The district and regional managers were actual sociopaths who only cared about power and profit, and that was just the front store. It's an unsustainable, evil way to run a business. I hope the company fails, and independent pharmacies make a comeback. I haven't set foot in one since I quit with no notice over 5 years ago.
THANK YOU, front line medical here got Covid and had to jump hoops to get off from work and then back to work. Y'all got real 'nosey'. My local CVS is a miracle but they work their fingers to the bone. Walgreens same. Back room handshake deals, algorithms funneling to meds from dentistry and OTC benefits... yikes.
I used to work for CVS as a cashier in the front store, and I will say it isn't as bad as what the pharmacy goes through but it wasn't nice in any capacity working for that company. I was always stressed and dreading work. I used to work at a high volume store (high traffic) and would have to take care of customers, clean, stock, open cases, fix any issues at the self checkout, and anything the store manager decides to pile on. I had to do all this with one manager and no one else to help and typically the managers were almost never on the floor. My last day working was black friday when the store manager decided to leave as soon as I showed up for my shift and told me tough luck as she left me completely alone to run the store and I was not allowed to close the store. long story short, a lot of people noticed I was alone and the situation quickly devolved into a looting situation and I didn't feel safe and decided that was my last shift. I happened to work in a store in Ohio and heard a few weeks later that Ohio smacked them with the lawsuit and it honestly brought me a little joy to hear that someone was actually doing something about the situation.
People must take their business elsewhere and never ever, regardless of how hard it will be, and never step in these places again. There will be so much trouble when everyone revolts. Stop the madness and savagery now. Quit attending these places!
This looting etc. will happen more often sadly but puts you/the workers in harms way. Scary. I'd have locked up called the boss and left. This is unsafe working conditions. Unions need to be brought in. I'd NEVER work there.
I’m very sorry you had to deal with that situation. I worked at Walgreens and it was a 24 hour store and my mom was always concerned when I was there past 10pm because of the crack headed stuff that was going on. Third shift was almost always late or never came in, so I ended up being there past 10 a lot. I would have to call my slack ass manager who was smoking in the back to please come to the front so I could leave at 10:30pm. It would be a few times I had to call. Only had one manager who would come up there when it got a little past 10pm to let me go. The slack ass manager actually told me that me and the one guy who would always come to our shifts promptly, were not that helpful because we wouldn’t stay after our actual shift. That’s funny, because I almost always came in for an extra shift. It’s bs. They were putting it on the people who actually showed up because the others didn’t want to show up. I was a doormat. My manager mainly gave me 7am-3pm and 2pm-10pm shifts. With the high turnover, there were times he schedule 2-10 one day and 7-3 the next day. Barely got sleep and was binge eating. Took an internship and got up out that hell hole. A lot of the people I worked with had loser behavior and were big bullies. Pharmacy would also tell me about all the horrible stuff they were going through and I’m so sorry they were even dealing with that. I’ve honestly become more depressed the more I think about our working conditions and how these psychopaths in charge are treating us like robots. We’re not meant to live this way!
I feel your pain. I've worked at CVS, Walgreens, and now a branch of Albertsons. I briefly worked at a brand new location for a bit, and there was one shift where I was literally the only employee in the entire store. I felt scared for my own safety. I had a checkout line stretching across the store, people yelling at me to open another checkout not realizing there was literally no other employees in the store, and nobody to relieve me when my shift ended. I clocked out that day and never returned. These retail giants don't give a damn about their employees, only their bottom line. I was a newb then, but nowadays if I were presented with that situation, I would've just closed the store and went home 😂
The FTC is responsible for preventing monopolies like this. CVS was allowed to buy Aetna b/c Joseph J. Simons (Head of FTC at the time, appointed by TRUMP) allowed it to go through. The current head of the FTC, Lina Khan, would have NEVER allowed this to happen. Unfortunately, she will be fired by Trump in January and replaced by someone who only looks out for big business and not US citizens.
As someone who worked as a supervisor at CVS at 636 6th Ave. in New York, New York I can say without a shadow of a doubt that CVS do not care about their customers and they do not care about the employees. CVS is the largest health insurance in America or the second largest and they never provided adequate or no healthcare to the employees.
It's a joke we get such crap Aetna insurance....even though we bought them and provide literal front line healthcare.....but people on state aid get better than us who work.
Insurance is a scam. Why would they run the scam on themselves? For those curious for more details: They know the True Costs of the Industry and have decided the only way to 'cover' those costs is to *deny payouts* to everyone involved. Not just the people who need medical coverage, being told they have to pay for it themselves, but they also *underpay* the medical side of things! Hospitals only get a fraction of the costs, and have to absorb the rest somehow, just so Insurance Companies can keep pocketing billions each year. Another group that is getting rammed even harder by this model is... the pharmacists. If they are the Insurance Provider and the Pharmaceutical, how can they undermine themselves? The entire medical field needs to get rid of these 'Insurance based' Parasites!
Pharmacy Technicians are also paid poorly, worked hard, treated poorly, expected to work 8+ hour shifts with no breaks or lunch, given no rewards for their hard work, pressured to get more work done than is possible in the time allotted.. and so on.
Internally, CVS and Walgreens consider themselves to be primarily real estate companies due to the amount of retail space they control. They're publicly traded so they'll ignore everything but profitability.
Well..... government regulations are supposed to protect us from this. Unfortunately, we keep voting in a president that only cares about making more money. The FTC is responsible for preventing monopolies like this. CVS was allowed to buy Aetna b/c Joseph J. Simons (Head of FTC at the time, appointed by TRUMP) allowed it to go through. The current head of the FTC, Lina Khan, would have NEVER allowed this to happen. Unfortunately, she will be fired by Trump in January and replaced by someone who only looks out for big business and not US citizens.
if you have a 401k or any type of investment/retirement plan. that makes you a shareholder as well. the system has been designed to make the average person act against their best interests. hey who cares if a car crash that wasnt your fault bankrupts you, as long as the economy is good
@@jtjoemamma Shareholders mean you have active shares in the business that is enough to let you have a voice on the board. So, no. 401k's and investment/retirement plans do not count.
As someone who just quit retail forever! I totally understand. They constantly made me work by myself and would complain payroll is to high even though I was almost always working by myself.
Companies need to be barred from this “I’ll hire 3 people to work different shifts” for 30hrs each, meanwhile each employee is working 3 of these jobs for 3 different companies. They need to be forced to hire full time workers and pay benefits.
I worked retail during the first year of Covid. I was working by myself most of the time because we wanted to reduce the risk of multiple staff being infected. There were days I didn't have a moment to eat, and of course had loads of work left to do after the doors were locked for the night. Now I have a lot of food avoidant issues and just general retail PTSD. It took me years to recover from the permanent "deer in headlights" feeling working like caused in me.
@@ChrisLincoln Then they realized they were making record profits with less people and worked to keep it that way. A lot of stores with false hiring to make it seem like they're open to workers but no ones hiring and the stores are unmanned. This is why they're desperate to get AI anything to work (or lower paid migrants or children, child labor is coming back!)
My mother was 99 years old and broke her hip. The hospital gave her a prescription for pain medication and we went to CVS, but the pharmacy was closed. I called the doctor and asked how she could get her prescription filled and the answer was that we were better off waiting until the next day (it was 6 PM at this point) because none of the supposed 24-hour pharmacies actually had pharmacists on duty. The next day CVS couldn't fill it because there was only one pharmacist able to dispense the medication and they were busy with injections. I came back later in the day and they again asked me to come back later for some reason that I don't remember. I know our healthcare is about everything except taking care of people (no money in that), but have tried to avoid CVS ever since.
And it's only going to keep getting worse because No matter who gets elected, the wealthy get their way Because they pump ungodly amounts of money into both sides of any given election
Because we accept it. Just like we agree to do the cashier's job by using the self checkout (without receiving any compensation), we've shown that we'll still patronize businesses that provide crappy service. There's no incentive for these companies to improve, when they give us less and we still line their coffers with cash.
Donald Trump had a pretty significant hand in these changes. Hope you didn't vote for him and can ride out the disaster that follows because the next 4 years are going to be rough.
Amazon is better than it was 10 years ago. I no longer wait in lines at CVS as it's delivered right to my door. ALL my prescribed medications were cheaper at Amazon Pharmacy than CVS without even needing to apply insurance discounting (i.e. it's cheaper than insurance). And CVS has been around a lot longer than Amazon Pharmacy, which started in late 2020.
I can confirm this. No staff and the pharmacy dept is overworked, and driven crazy with customer load. This has been going on for + 5 to 6 years now. It’s horrible. The pharmacists are heros considering the crap company they work for. FLORIDA HERE
This has been the corporate norm for 40 years. It's getting more visible. Ever hear politicians talk about socialism or people looking for a handout? It's billionaires with their hands held out wanting more.
I was assaulted by a CVS pharmacy worker last year when I was just trying to pick up a prescription! She was pissed off and chose to take it out on me. And the manager said it was the 5th time she’d done that to a customer.
@ohiasdxfcghbljokasdjhnfvaw4ehr you know the late universe theory where it expands so much that things would get too spaced out to see? Cuz this reminded me of that
If pharmacies are effectively a public service, they should not be on the stock market where "growth", meaning continual shareholder profits, is the only actual goal. An effective service doesn't need to grow, it only needs to be sustainable. Endless growth is not sustainable, something always has to be squeezed, in this case it is the employees and the public who rely on pharmacy services. We need to band together and make pharmacies a real public service, accountable to the people, that we can rely on.
@@madelinehoyle1059 pharma is a product, for consumers. Businesses, albeit corporate or small(mom/pop) are at the risk of profit margins. Gas stations don’t profit much on fuel, but they get you in the store to buy more… Not saying you’re wrong. Pharma might be the issue.
pharmacies, hospitals, anything to do with medical care should be public services. Going further, they're overall job should be to actually make themselves less necessary overtime. Growth at all costs means they are incentivized to put more people on more prescriptions, put more people on low-grade treatment plans rather than actually trying to fix the issues we can fix. The mechanism through which we accomplish that is left to future discussions, but I think we need that for healthcare, police, and possibly some other services as well.
I approve 100%. I was a pharmacist at Walgreens, just as bad as CVS. I left because I am afraid I would kill or harm my patients. Working condition is absolutely terrible.
We switched from CVS to Walgreens a few years ago. The one time I went inside the Walgreens to pick something up that wasn't a prescription, the cashier was the rudest (and possibly racist) I've ever seen. She was just berating this little old Haitian lady in line in front of me because she couldn't understand her. Calling her a problem, lecturing her, scolding her, it went on and on. I tried to find somebody to talk to about her, but there was literally nobody else in sight in the entire store. So I came back, stuck whatever it was I was buying on the counter, and told her exactly why I was leaving without buying it. I wish I could have done more, but god. If that's how they treat their customers who haven't done a single thing wrong? Anyway, we go to an independent pharmacy now.
My local one closed and forced me to Kroger. My pharmacist did notice a doctor prescribed three medications the could and did cause serotonin syndrome. Had he not known my husband my sight, and told him tell her to stop taking this since the doctors refused to call him, it could have been fatal...his name was Tim. He was a good man. I suspect he doesn't work for them anymore. If you're out there Tim....thanks. You saved me. The doctors refused to listen to me when I told them what you said and told me to follow the directions. I obviously don't have them as doctors anymore!
this is a giant problem to me, the doctors should be charged for attempted murder & held accountable since they are paid so well and so educated yet most doctors dont seem to give a rats booty about their patients here in the us 😭
I'm sorry but I'm having a really hard time parsing your comment. Do you think you could clarify your language a bit better? Regardless, I'm happy you're okay!
@@StoutShako Tim the pharmacist helped them by pointing out a bad interaction with their medications (that or the meds themselves caused the serotonin syndrome). Their actual doctor(s) that prescribed the meds on the other hand refused to listen to the poster when they told him what Tim said about serotonin syndrome; the doctors instead just said to follow the directions on the medication. They have since switched doctors
Corporate greed IS the major problem with the American standard of living. They squeeze everything possible and give nothing to the employees that run things
Not pharmacies themselves - the corporations that run them and have that huge disconnect between the reality of what pharmacies face versus the metrics corporations push. It’s how big companies can avoid direct accountability and put the blame on staff/humans running the places rather than the entities. We need not to blame the overworked people suffering - we need to push for better work environments everywhere without greed/corp profit as the motivator.
I worked at Walgreens in the pharmacy. They operate the same way CVS does and they’ve been doing this since waaay before the pandemic. Overworking, underpaying, ignoring employee feedback galore. Now they all are like :0 but I’m just smiling and watching them burn. As a taste, we would get in trouble if our phone calls with patients lasted more than 30 seconds. That’s how time crunched we were, so if you were on the phone with someone in the pharmacy and you felt rushed and like they didn’t care, it’s because we were constantly getting flagged over phone calls over 31 seconds lol
Walgreens almost killed my mom twice by failing to get her insulin until after she complains about not having any. Sadly for that specific kind that goes in her device insurance only goes through Walgreens or something stupid like that. So she's at the Mercy of them and it's honestly really scary. She's been to the ER for diabetic related issues at least 3 times this past year and that's just this year there's more times last year.
Dennis Miller wrote an eye opening book back in 2012 (Pharmacy Exposed: 1,000 Things That Can Go Deadly Wrong At the Drugstore). These chains look at a prescription error and the potential lawsuit as a calculated risk. What’s cheaper? Fully staffing their stores OR paying out the occasional wrongful death lawsuit where they put ALL the blame on the overworked pharmacist. I was a certified pharmacy technician from 2003 to 2020. My breaking point was being stuck at the cash register, phones ringing non stop and my pharmacist running around trying to enter in the new prescriptions, bill insurances, fill the prescriptions, AND make sure she didn’t make any mistakes. Watching her I just knew we were set up to fail and I couldn’t be apart of the system any more. I let my license and certification expire. I never want to step foot behind a pharmacy counter again.
question. where do you currently go when you need a prescription filled or vaccine given? i’d like go somewhere else to lessen the burden on those chain pharmacies
I can answer that for you. If your insurance can and allow mail order for chronic medications, do it. Usually mail order allows up to 90-day fill. Otherwise, if it’s something urgent or as simple as getting an antihistamine or antibiotic for short term treatment, there’s no point doing the mail order. As far as vaccines are concerned, that can be tricky. It’s tricky because of insurance. Most vaccines given in physician/PCP can cost you up front; however, if you choose to have your vaccine done at a pharmacy sometimes it might cost you less or even with no copay at all. Here’s just my suggestion: If your insurance dictates you must get your vaccines at a pharmacy, make sure you go online and make an appointment. Upload all your insurance information beforehand because this will save everyone time and headache. If you need series of shots it is better to go back to that pharmacy where you got your initial dose. And remember, your pharmacy card is different from your medical insurance card. For example, pharmacy card will contain information, such as SUBSCRIBER ID, RXBIN/BIN, RXPCN, RXGRP. Hope this helps😊
@@levelsofdifficultyI don’t get any of the annual vaccines but I would prefer having it done at my doctor’s office. I only have 1 prescription and I still have it filled where I used to work (until my pharmacist leaves then I’ll transfer to an independent or Costco). I use the app to refill my prescription early because they special order my brand and I give them at least a week to get that done.
@@jpman2173I refuse to do mail order for medications. There is zero quality control during shipment in contrast to the strict regulations that follow medications from manufacturer to the pharmacy. It is huge problem for sensitive medications. I'm not gambling my health with an unregulated courier.
Every time I go into a Walgreens or CVS, or Target for that matter, I feel like they’re pushing us all to buy everything online. But I hate buying everything online. I want to see the thing in person and make sure I’m getting the thing I want. I want to talk to the pharmacist and not have it accidentally shipped to my last apartment that CVS still has on file even though I updated it on their website (you have to call and talk to someone to get it changed on the pharmacy portion of your account.) I feel terrible for the staff.
The people who work in the pharmacy told me CVS understaffs the pharmacy on purpose. I stopped going to CVS a year ago when my pharmacist, who's usually a great person, was so wound up I thought she was going to explode. It was difficult to be around someone who was that unhappy, plus service had gone downhill, which is why I quit going there.
This. I used to work there. Basically how it works is corporate will give you a total number of hours for the managers schedule techs to work each week, but those hours are nowhere enough. We are open for 12 hours on weekdays and 8 hours in weekends which means the pharmacy is open 76hours a week. But corporate will only let us schedule techs for up to 80 hours a week across all techs. Meaning we cant even have 2 techs at all time, the hours are spread THIN. Our store fills about 500 prescriptions a day BY HAND, and we're constantly running around trying to answer phone calls, pickup, drive thru, and we get dinged by corporate if we let anything sit in the queue for more than 15minutes.
@@kspade1788exactly! And that’s why the customer service is so terrible because people are worried about not getting dinged by corporate and possibly losing their jobs due to “lack of performance”. The customers will always lose in these situations
Yeah a few years ago both CVS and Walgreens went from "you can pick up your prescription in 15 minutes" to you can get it in three days if you're lucky.
@@BlueCyann My neighborhood Walgreens says "allow3 days" but usually have refills ready the next day. New scripts, it varies. The location always seems like it would be faster and more efficient if they had one more pharm tech.
This after CVS jacked up their prices on all OTC medicine, skincare, and hygiene products ... and they keep many items behind glass. None of the savings from short staffing is passed down to the customer.
@@janelleg597.... no, there really doesn't. How much of the Kool-Aid do you need to have consumed to come to a conclusion like this???? Albert Bruce Sabin, responsible for developing the oral Polio vaccine, did so without filing for a patent -- believe it or not, people do and make things for the sake of that thing existing. Polio *SUCKS* , and it doesn't take a profit motive for people to think "we should figure out how to prevent and/or cure this". Good lord, man, please think critically about the ideology of the owning class - it's a cancer.
They have to pretend they're hiring so they fulfill the covid business loan/grant requirements. Many companies will collect resumes and do interviews even when they are not hiring because they want to have names to pull when a current employee leaves.
I am a pharmacist working for another national chain which has prioritized staffing and safety over the past few years following COVID. We have seen consistent sales increases and much happier customers and patients. It’s not paradise but it’s a very respectable and satisfying career, as it should be. Every day we transfer in a considerable number of prescriptions from Walgreens and CVS and we would transfer more of the PBMs didn’t get in the way.
My insurance (actually not Aetna) specifically requires me to use CVS, both brick-and-mortar and mail (Caremark). Saying "just go independent" doesn't reflect the reality of how these companies put a stranglehold on the patient.
I had the same experience until I told my program provider that I would pay out of pocket and file a complaint with consumer agencies in my state. Two days later they told me to use the local independent as I had been doing before. They dislike turbulence more than forced consumerism.
@cloudnine5651 You know some people don't have a choice when they get insurance through their employer, right? That's the main way to get insurance is to have a job!
Yeah but at the same time imagine the effect that CVS has on the US... making medicine accessible to so many people across the nation. Imagine they started closing stores, it would make it so much harder for people to get their meds.
It's sadly the same game in every society with highly pyramidal leadership. Monarchs, religious leaders, dictators, the owner class - no matter the name, they're the same evil, only wearing different hats.
@@grmpEqweer I don't like the wording, but "eat the rich" is a slogan. It includes things like fully taxing them instead if just to letting them evade taxes or lobbying politicians for it. It's taking back the millions of dollars many rich people and corporations stole from the people. Etc. I suggest watching More Perfect Union and Second Thought on how rich businesses stole millions of dollars in wage theft and how wage theft is the biggest theft. Watch the Market Exit.
CVS pharmacy has been understaffed and abusing pharmacists for years. I remember watching an exposé several years ago - maybe even longer than that. It might have even been in 2002 or 2003.
The entire pharmaceutical industry is understaffed now just CVS after Covid, no one wants to be in contact with the virus or another one that could emerge.
@@Teresa-n5sthe “labor shortage” is what they want you to think. They are intentionally saying they are hiring and that nobody wants to work, while filtering out 100% of applications and working their skeleton crews to the bones for profit. It’s all for shareholder profit and lining their pockets any way they can. And if they can get you to think it’s because of a labor shortage that doesn’t exist, it gives them the scapegoat to keep doing this downright evil shit to real, hardworking people just trying to do right by their fellow people.
@@Teresa-n5s specifically in CVS they said the pandemic is not the sole reason; they are purposefully keeping their staff understaffed as said in the video too. Because money :/
I know a guy who’s been in rehab for years, he was supposed to be given a month’s supply of Suboxone, but was mistakenly given a month’s supply of methadone. A powerful synthetic opiate. He easily could have died if he was in a different place, emotionally or mentally.
I successfully sued CVS back in the early 2000’s for some bs cutting corners that nearly destroyed my (then) 6 month old child’s brain. Spanked them, and never went back.
Before the pandemic my mom was taking weight loss meds. The meds had a warning not to take them for more than 6 months, something nobody ever told her as she ended up taking them for more than a year. After stopping her meds her health went back to normal.
@@phonkyfeel1 I'm so sorry. My own mom is still furious and shaken more than a decade after a psychiatrist tried to prescribe me a highly addictive medication meant to treat an entirely different set of symptoms than what was described. If she wasn't a pharmacy tech who knew immediately how wrong the prescription was, things would have gone very badly for me at a very young age. That isn't even touching on the number of other medical professionals that dismissed my issues earlier because "obviously this first time mom is just paranoid and exaggerating" despite her professional background. Our healthcare system needs reform. It's unacceptable to ignore, mistreat, or mishandle the treatment of adults, god forbid children. Your child deserved better, I deserved better, and all the mothers out there bearing the burden of their sick children suffering at the hands of greedy corporations and apathetic governments deserve better
Suboxone is a powerful synthetic opiate. Either methadone or suboxone will do the same thing for an addict. I’m doubting your story though because methadone is only administered to addicts in a clinical setting whereas suboxone can be administered at home.
@jackstraw262 methadone can also be prescribed by a doctor and filled at a pharmacy. It usually comes in 10mg or 40mg tablets. The methadone clinics dispense liquid methadone.
Reading this as a Norwegian is horrifying. Filling a prescription is a totally foreign concept here, you just go to whatever (online) pharmacy, they check your ID in the government prescription system, and they give you your meds and advice. Are you really being locked into the pharmacies your doctor decides?? Free market my ass.
I live in America. You think you're horrified? I'm watching my country destroy itself. Anybody that's in charge of anything from big companies to little stores is hell bent I'm coming up with a new way of doing things that doesn't work. You couldn't even imagine how insane this country has become. Most of us went from living pretty good lives to just trying to survive in a broken world. It's honestly gotten so bad a lot of people are in shock and still can't believe what's going on. What's going on with CVS is extremely Petty and nothing to worry about compared to all the really messed up stuff that's going on.
Freedom European-style is freedom to eat healthy food, access health care as needed, walk or bike in safety, and not worry about your kids getting shot in school. Freedom US-style is corporations doing whatever the f they want and if that kills people, dying is the price of freedom.
No, you can tell your doctor where to send the prescription... it's your insurance company that tells you which ones you're allowed to pick. Different kind of horrifying.
Yeah it's the same in Canada. You bring the paper or they send the prescription to the pharmacy of your choice, which can be a chain or an independent, whatever you want. I've been to several different pharmacies in the area for prescriptions, all depending on what errands I wanted to run. The idea of being "locked into" a pharmacy chain could easily be completely smashed through health and strong gov't intervention in the healthcare system in the US. But it won't be, because that's not what voters in the US want.
I refuse to step foot in a cvs, or walgreens. They are both always understaffed and chaotic, and it was obvious to me that they weren't paying their employees enough money. So I'm glad to spend a bit more and use my locally owned pharmacy--that would be Jolley's, owned by Ben Jolley in my hometown of Salt Lake City.
Honestly, it’s not much different from what these pro-union campaigns are doing! The people in charge are still making a profit off the workers they’re supposed to represent.
Remember when Walgreens invested $50 million in Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. Then acted like they weren't stupid enough to do that. Your health, their wealth‼️
Im an independent and both red and blue sides have many flaws but it irks me when hard core Republicans say "we want government off our backs" and "we don't want more regulation", which means let me do whatever I want to make money, without caring about consequences to the people, that translates into questionable companies doing questionable things and trying to dodge inspections and settling out of court to be able to keep on making profit at all costs...
"We need to keep our hours down" is exactly what we hear in all healthcare facilities. Working as a CNA in Montana, we would hear, "We need to low census someone" because we had one less patient than corporate wanted that day to have 6 CNAs. So, we would end up with roughly a 1:13 CNA to patient ratio. Trust me when I say that having one more CNA for the patients is an absolute life saver. All because we would float from 66 to 65 patients. SOMETIMES, if we had 65 long enough, we were allowed 6 aides for a few days.
Wow, it's different in Texas. I quit overnight, ratio 1:25 with baths and leftover meal assistance to those that needed it. Day was allowed 3, but they never finished bed changes, meals, or logs.
As a CVS employee, and as someone who watches my mom work for CVS too. This is all but true. Its actually stupid how much CVS gets away with, at one point there was 3 front store employees manning the cash registers because the techs were so far behind on filling. My mom worked for CVS for 5 years and about 2 of those years was in pharmacy, and it was so sad to see her so tired and overworked. I work in front store and let me tell you, it is not easy, even with TWO employees everyday! I cannot even imagine some of these other comments where its only one person! Thats not only not allowed but dangerous. And people still seem to get mad at the employees for (Heres a list of things ive been yelled at for): Coupons not working, things being locked up, peices being too high, not enough help. Etc. I never understood why people get mad at the enployees for those things, and not at the fucking abouslutly massive company that sucks ass. Unfortunately i cant quit right now, but as soon as im able to i am. The ONLY reason im putting a two weeks in and not ghosting is cause my store manager is actually really cool and i dont wanna fuck him over like cvs is already doing to him
I was a pharmacy tech for 13 years until I left to get my degree in medical science. My mom is a pharmacist. This video is 💯 and its not just CVS. Its literally every chain pharmacy. Sadly I knew one pharmacist to pass away from the stress and another to have a nervous breakdown. Several more that I didn't know well had some kind of stress related health issues and left the field. Its a horrible job. I used to want to be a pharmacist. After my college got delayed I realized that I hated how the industry had become and I changed to something else partly due to these issues. Its horrible healthcare.
There are many other countries glad to welcome health care workers tired of being abused in the US. You and your colleagues all need to consider your options.
Most of the sharholders are huge investment firms. Those are owned by other businesses and it’s turtles all the way down. So no, the shareholders don’t buy prescriptions.
You may want to investigate CVS' crazy policy to allow people to go into their store, load their bags with whatever catches their eyes and just walk out escorted by the third party security guy. I asked him why he did not stop the thief? He told me their policy was to not stop them. I was dumbfounded. What legal fear when someone is stealing your product??? I don't want to live in a country where this is tolerated. Why pay more money for extra security and then just allow whomever to walk in and take stuff???
Because the security does not have the police power to detain. Trying to detain someone - even a thief - is illegal. Similarly, trying to use physical force against someone committing a crime that won't physically hurt you is still assault. Both of these can get the company sued. Its cheaper to keep a list of who is stealing what, and then go to the police when it reaches a felony level than it is to risk lawsuits from shoplifters.
Excellent work on this one - Ohio Pharmacist. However to add some clarification to the recent regulations in Ohio, it has yet to be seen if the new rules will have any tangible benefit for pharmacists and staffs in regard to workload/understaffing. Pharmacists can request help without retaliation, but the company isn't required to provide it; corporate is only tasked with maintaining a procedure for staffing requests. A previous iteration of the regulation would have set a minimum requirement for pharmacy staff, however, employers managed to axe it in favor of the language in the final proposal. I don't work for CVS anymore, but rather a local grocery chain and the issues addressed here are present in almost every aspect of retail pharmacy. I fear nothing short of federal anti-trust legislation will be enough to right the ship and prevent further vertical integration of pharmacy.
This was among my thoughts as well when that was highlighted in the video. "How exactly do these new regulations work, and are they actually going to change anything, and does it not have enough enforcement behind it to be effective?"
@@JaniceinOR Yes, exactly. As a pharmacist, you often have to make decisions that aren't black and white. Companies can go back through what you've done and point something out that goes against their policies, which I guarantee almost all pharmacists have done at some point.
@@ironsquid9724 I checked the text of the "Pharmacists Fight Back" bill and it has a rule where the US Attorney General can unilaterally dismiss any accusation made against a PBM for any reason. lolsob. Also it was referred to committee back in July and nothing's happened since so it seems unlikely to pass to begin with.
it feels alike a bill saying "hey stop being bad" won't cut it. Healthcare is a Textbook example of a "Market Failure". Any for-profit approach is doomed to fail.
I was a CVS Pharmacy Technician for 3 years (from 2016-2019) and I will say that this video is 100% spot on. The pharmacy staff was always under so much pressure. High volume of prescriptions, unrealistic goals to fill those prescriptions, meds constantly on back order, and we were always understaffed because the company constantly cut our hours in order to cut costs. We would receive many complaints from customers, but received no support from corporate to fix these issues. This was a TERRIBLE company to work for. I always tell my peers to avoid working for CVS. They do not take care of their employees. The day that I quit and walked out in the middle of my shift was the best decision for my health, well being, and my sanity. I’ve never looked back since.
I worked at cvs right out of pharmacy school, and the only reason i got a lunch break was because they got sued through a class action lawsuit. I worked a 12-hour shift, and 10 of those hours are by myself. So when i had to close the pharmacy to take a 30 minutes lunch, Sure enough when i came back, there were always people pissed off because they had to wait. It was the worse job I've ever had. I couldn't quit since i had student loans of around 200k . This was more than 10 years ago, the amount rphs are graduating with now a days i can imagine have only sky rocketed. Now that i have kids, i will definitely warn them to not take this career path. As a medical professional, you don't make that much either, currently most of my paycheck goes towards daycare for the kids. Thankfully i took whatever money i had leftover and started investing.
@AMcGrath82 The C-suite primarily but also the PBMs (middlemen, also owned by CVS), Board members (with no pharmacy education or care for patients) and/ or shareholders that buy and sells shares on the stockmarket. Welcome to corporate america.
Former employee here. CVS killed my coworker and disabled me for over 10 years now... My pharmacy manager IGNORED my doctor's note and mads me disobey... which disabled me for life.... and omg the horrors and law breaking I saw all the time....
We have 4 CVS’s in a ~5 mile radius. One of the ones in a Target moved the pharmacist to a free standing location ~2 miles away. So there is no pharmacist actually on-site. Sometime they re-route controlled medications to a location with the pharmacist on-site and they don’t even notify patients or providers. Other times, they have to video chat w/ a remote pharmacist before being dispensing it. There are so many opportunities for error and delayed care w/ this model.
Thank you for covering this, ive seen US pharmacy staff crying out to be noticed for a couple years now and i cant imagine how much worse it can get from here. When we're placing the lives of vulnerable people in our hands, we must not allow corporations to make us compromise on patient safety.
Well damn, this explains a hell of a lot. My local CVS pharmacist refused to fill an essential, and I MEAN ESSENTIAL medication, for over a month. I'm lucky to be breathing. The pharmacist refused to fill my prescription for an entire month, repeatedly insisting my doctor had failed to submit a correct and complete prescription order. So, a big shout out to CVS Corporate, for literally, nearly fucking killing me. I am really hoping for a class action lawsuit here and I will be the first in line to join. I have every text message, recorded all of my phone calls with the pharmacist, and I'm certain my physician would be happy to provide a copy of the complaint he filed with the state board of pharmacy after he personally called the pharmacist demanding to know why she refused to fill the prescription that they - CVS and the pharmacist - had filled, without question, every single month, for over three years.
Condolencias on your situation but you’d be surprised how many doctors don’t know what they need to include on a prescription for it to meet legal requirements. It’s not the pharmacists job to educate the provider on how to write a script though most things can be corrected with a phone call… that still relies on being able to get ahold of the providers staff and get an answer.
YES I've also gone weeks/months without medication due to ridiculous, random technical issues on CVS's end, which nobody had enough time to look into properly, let alone resolve. Even after several escalations (including an internal IT ticket filed by the head pharmacist), I ended up giving up & having my dr. send the prescription to a different pharmacy in the next town over. I _love_ having to drive past the CVS (which is a few blocks away from my house) & into a whole different town to get my medication every single month now just because CVS can't figure out how to actually provide the pharmaceutical services they claim to offer. /sarcasm Unfortunately, it's still preferable to the alternative. (Sitting around calling the pharmacy every day for weeks on end, on hold for at least an hour every time & often hung up on, while my symptoms continue to get worse because I'm not able to access the available treatment 😑)
You guys are scaring me. I'm currently on steroids for an inflammatory condition and I've been told it's a very bad idea to stop them suddenly. Both times I've had them filled (original, and one refill), it's been a days long process. It's been a few years since I've been on daily medication of any kind, and I've never experienced anything like this before. I'm going to have to bring it up with the doctor.
@@catsrmylyf Ha! And to think, all this time, I actually thought it was just me. My prescription was finally filled, but only after my doctor personally called the offending pharmacist. Quite intrestingly, when I picked up, the pharmacist was MIA, as were all of the pharmacy techs I was familiar with. Folks wearing CVS badges around their necks who I'm guessing were corporate CVS trainers, were busy working new techs and assisting the new pharmacist. Not sure exactly what my doctor said, but it seems to have had a rather profound effect! BTW, love your username. I happily relate.
I am a pharmacist. I can relate to what these colleges are going through. As a professional though, I would rather be unemployed than work in such conditions.
We need to support them to get out, the same as the obstetricians and gynaecologists. While their country won't let them do their job and care for their patients conscientiously, the best thing is to help them move to a country that will.
@@luvroo11 That's why pharmacists that don't want to work in conditions where they're likely to end up killing someone, go and find a different job to do. We need to help more of them move out of the US. Like the obstetricians and gynaecologists, their skills are well in demand in the rest of the world and we will treat them with respect as valued health care professionals.
I worked at a startup that mined data from the PBM's and that data was used to estimate automobile insurance because there are complex mathematical formulas that can estimate likelihood of an accident based on prescriptions. Supposedly the customer has to give permission, but c'mon.
CVS isn’t big pharma. Did you watch the video? CVS owns the pharmacy, the PBM, and the insurance company. If anything they’ve got big pharma over a barrel.
Business needs to pay their way to play…I can’t speak to their profits, but if you operate on a negative then the pharmacists are lucky to have a job and income, from the company.
@@Anonsense-w5g No they don't. Their profits are a fixed % of their costs. The more big pharma charges them, the more profit they make. And the costs get rolled right into next year's premium increase. Look at the explosion of drugs that cost thousands (or tens of thousands) per month, and the rapid increase in insurance premiums over the past few years.
I was a pharmacist at cvs for a year and couldn’t take it anymore. Now work for an independent that is struggling with reimbursement under cost for some drugs. On drugs that would be profitable the insurance will saying something like “this drug has to be filled as a 90 day supply but you’re not a 90 day in network pharmacy” so they can’t fill with us. (The 90 day in network pharmacy is completely arbitrary they just set it that way so they can stiff us) patients love using us and ask if they can use goodrx instead but if we do that we’ll go out of business even faster because goodrx actually charges the pharmacy a fee claiming that they’re the only reason a patient filled with us so they get essentially a finders fee. The discounted price can be below cost and is made even lower with the fee
Yeah, I'm a tech and just changed jobs from a large grocery chain to a small independent. I prefer the staffing level and the culture at my new job, but I am honestly not sure if I'll even have this job much longer, because of the difficulties I'm hearing we have. And to top it off, its cheaper for me to pay cash for MY meds than go through the PBM!
I have Aetna/CVS insurance and they are endlessly frustrating w/ all Rx. That 90 day supply issue has nearly fukt me over but I refuse to go to CVS if at all possible.
Obstetricians and Gynaecologists are already leaving the US in droves. Time for pharmacists to follow suit. There are plenty of other countries who will treat you with respect and dignity and allow you to do your job properly.
I miss our local small pharmacy so much. They got bought up by Walgreens. The pharmacists used to know me by sight and we were on a first name basis. They did whatever they could to make sure I didn't miss a dose of medication if something for some reason was going wrong with getting it filled. Now I have no idea who is handing me my medications (almost never the same people either) and sometimes it takes weeks for them to solve insurance or supply issues, making me miss my medications for all that time.
This directly affects me in multiple ways. My local pharmacy had to tell me to go somewhere else because insurance wouldn't pay enough for the meds I need. Guess where I ended up being forced to go, instead? More than that, the CVS I got sent to isn't even able to get me the meds I need on a consistent basis. Heck, I had a new med prescribed to me that I haven't even had yet, even thought he scrip was submitted weeks ago "It's on back order". It's insane. I WANT to go back to my old pharmacy, but they explained that if I used them without insurance, I'd be paying thousands per month. I don't even have the _option_ of supporting my local business, even though I want to. It's a gut punch. I don't get to shop local anymore, not because prices are cheaper at some stupid box store, but because the competition rigged it in their favor.
I'm surprised the workers don't go on a "no ticket" strike - if there aren't enough employees to do all the tasks, just tell all those people waiting in line that they can go home with their medicine without paying. Hit those share-holders where it hurts. Probably illegal, but so were normal strikes once, and so are rent strikes.
That would be on a whole different level. That's hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of conversion. Prison. If it were me, I think I'd be sending videos and extensive information to enforecment agencies. Maybe even redacted videos to the press. I might hand out business cards for mail-order pharmacies that follow procedures.
@@yesitschelle From any country? No? China must get excluded due to, I do not want Temu sellers being able to say " hey you can get this " while even worse enslaved people are being paid in peanuts. Also keep placebos off of the market. By making the usa compete with other European countries. It would put pressure without too much fraud.
Pharmacies also invest in food conglomerates, or perhaps it’s the reverse. These companies know that the processed garbage Americans eat is making them sick, and they will be good pharmacy customers. The drug companies are always looking to create a new blockbuster drug that people will need to take on a daily basis for life. They want customers. They are busy spending taxpayer money to develop solutions in search of a problem, rather than developing drugs to help people who are suffering with very serious diseases, just because there aren’t millions and billions of people with that disease.
thank you for this video-my local CVS pharmacy just closed despite being in an active, high traffic location that served hundreds if not thousands of patients and customers. the pharmacist had little explanation for the closure other than “corporate decisions.” they pushed my prescription refills to another CVS further down the road that i hate going to due to the aforementioned understaffing and general chaos. this is truly eye opening. capitalism and corporate greed really is going to kill us all
I went to get an emergency script because we left our dogs Prednisolone at home when we were on vacation. A 60 day supply costs us around $30 from our vet, but CVS wanted to charge me over $150 for a ten day supply. Thankfully we only needed one days worth, but that should be illegal. I won't ever go to CVS ever again if I can avoid it.
There are three CVS stores/pharmacies within two miles of my home in the suburbs of Indianapolis, Indiana. They don’t seem to have the problems this video is describing. The products aren’t locked up, the aisles aren’t full of boxes, and there are several employees at each store. I don’t know why they are doing better than the stores in this video, but I’m glad the employees and pharmacists aren’t being treated badly.
Same here in the Philly suburbs. We have many, many CVS locations around here, and I've never been in one that looked like the one in the video. Nothing's locked up, no crates in the aisles, and there are plenty of customers. They are criminally understaffed, though. I hate when I go in and there's only one person in the pharmacy. That's extremely stressful, and you know what stressed out people do? Make mistakes. Except these ones can be fatal.
This is true of all the ones I've been to in new england. There is one in a kinda depressed area that has stuff locked up. Odd stuff too, like toothpaste, even though the expensive makeup isn't.
Depends how bad the theft rate is in your area, seems like you live in a nice area, but give it time, 1 or 2 of those cvs will not be there in the near future.
It’s almost like the real problem is the economic pressure of the local area in relationship to shoplifting, and the pharmacy argument is just a red herring to avoid the real issue of not enforcing shoplifting laws
I was in Indianapolis for 15 weeks in 2023. Yes, the inner city locations do have these problems. I used the location on Meridian Road and it was terrible. The drive-thru even had a hand written paper sign hanging stating 45 minute wait per car at the window.
I still have one, but I can tell they're struggling. Suggest people look into mail order instead. Even with Medicaid, I've found online pharmacies that would mail prescriptions.
This is so alien and bizarre to me.. I live in Canada in a major city.. I can't remember the last time there were maybe more than 2 or 3 people ahead of me in line to see the pharmacist, just a few minutes wait at most usually. We certainly don't have things like deoderant (or anything for that matter) etc locked up.. everything's just on shelves, you pick it up and take it to the cashier... why would you cripple productivity having to get a clerk to fetch a $5 item? Is theft so rampant in America? Is CVS the only pharmacy in the US? Here our biggest is Shopper's Drugmart... but there's also at least 2 other fairly large competitors around (not as prolific though) and many many small, independent pharmacies as well. America is a very weird place.
No every grocery store has a pharmacy CVS is like Walmart for corner stores of course it's going to suck its basically a gas station withe meds instead of gas. I live in a small town and we have probably 20 or more pharmacy's for a small population. Mostly small locally ran pharmacy's that know your name and face when you walk in. This is another big city issue.
Yes, it is. Widespread megalopolist mindset is to blame, not the end consumer theft. I could have misread the title of this video as 'Home Goods', or a dozen other companies. They are all doing this type of financial oppression on an inescapable level. This country is still under slavery and people are MEANT to go hungry, as a market motivator.
I’m a pharmacist for Walgreens and CVS is the one place I’d never consider working. Imagine going to college for 8 years, getting a doctorate degree, and end up working in a glorified sweatshop.
I stopped going to CVS a couple years ago because they were so hopelessly understaffed and could never get any of my prescriptions filled. Switched to the little pharmacy inside my local grocery chain and couldn't be happier. Service is great and fast, and they always answer the phone if I have any questions. I hadn't even considered the safety aspect of an understaffed pharmacy at the time.
CVS receipts are so long, you could knit a scarf or draft a screenplay on one. Maybe that’s the real reason they’re ‘getting worse’-running out of paper!
When I went to pick up a prescription at CVS last week, the Pharmacist said she was there ALL BY HERSELF. She was filling prescriptions, answering the phone, and tending to customers at both the drive-thru and the counter. No one should have to work like that.
I knew they kept the pharmacies understaffed, but that's just nuts.
Tell her to quit. It's not worth it for her to give up her sanity for this company. She should open a consulting business to speak to people face to face about their medicine, not be a dispensing monkey.
This is everywhere nowadays. Im a waitress, and work with a skeleton crew. I’m a host, busser, dishwasher, and a server all at the same time. Because of me working four different positions I definitely make mistakes I normally wouldn’t if they gave us needed staffing. Capitalism is starting to eat itself.
Oh hell no.
Don't support them. Find a local pharmacy and support a small business. Completely different experience.
Is it just me or is the main problem in the US that every company wants to squeeze every penny out of the system no matter what just to please the shareholders which leads to a whole lot of absurdity... ?
Yup, it's greed.
Ronald Regan started this chaos. Trump will make things worse. He is a idiot trust fund baby
The problem is it's illegal for a company to do anything else. Companies are legally required to put the profits of shareholders over anything else, or they risk getting sued.
Wtf? @@creesmith2794
Yeah... once a company goes public it's shit. Because it's not "public" it's held by VCs and wealthy investors who will breath down any companies neck for nothing but profits
Part of why CVS is so bad is because the government for some reason let them buy up Aetna, one of the largest insurance companies in the US. I still have NO CLUE how the government didn't see the blatantly obvious conflict of interest of a pharmacy owning the insurance company and negotiating with themselves on how they reimburse themselves for prescription drugs.
They saw it. But they're stockholders!
Because the government is in bed with the corporations
Donation recipients, more like. @@12crows1
Yet CVS is still not doing well…
That was in 2018 (wildly wrong in the video) and announced in 2017. What party was in control of the entire government in 2017? It should be obvious. It should also be obvious you should never vote for them.
I worked at CVS in the past the problem is they believe that one guy can do the job of 3 people . This isn’t just a problem in pharmacy but also at front store. I was constantly expected to man the cashier , vacuum the front isles, face them , put throwbacks away and stock the front isles . I would help one customer then vacuum for a second and another would show up . It was so annoying running back and fourth. When I worked overnight truck I tried to ask the district manager for time and a half . She told me no. I said then what’s the point of working overnight destroying my health if I get the same wage. She said the incentive is I get more hours. This was such a scum company.
I'm convinced that a lot of companies saw what happened during covid, said to themselves, 'wow, people will put up with this?' and then just ran with it.
A bunch of pushovers
I’ve been saying the exact same thing, especially in regards to everything being so expensive now. These corporations / companies realized they could get away with it, and haven’t stopped since.
Yep we have fast food restaurants near me that still won't open the dining lobbies because they can just put two employees on shift to handle the drive thru and door dash orders
Yes Covid will go down as one of the worst things that ever happened to this country. Marc my word we’re already starting to slowly see all the repercussions.
@@kathleen5296they realized they’ll elect Trump and never fights back against any injustice. As long as Americans have some other class or ethnicity to feel holier than
a 1.5 million dollar fine for a company with yearly profit of 8+ billion is simply a small cost of doing business for them.
absolute joke
It should have been $4-$6 MILLION FINE
But... 'the gloves are off.' Wow thank you journalism.
Are you calling $1.5 million a small amount? Then why is it equal to their annual payroll??
Wait a minute...
Fines don't work. Throwing people in jail does.
@@rogerbartlet5720 I bet a fine of 10% net profit would make these scum bags think twice as a matter of job retention.
It's almost as if an essential service like medication fulfillment should never be handled by institutions whose main goal is profit over being a public service.
@@owenamenta1 I’ve not gotten my prescribed medication from a hospital 🧐
@andyruse4670 so...let's re-occupy Wall Street? This time, on the inside of the building, not the outside.
Most hospitals even if open to the public are run as for profit institutions instead of as an Essential Service Subsidised by State and Federal Governments which they are @@HoustonRacewayKid
and someonhow peoope think LESS regulation is going to save us.
We need UHC. Health care should be just like the fire department and police department.
I remember when our hospital had a pharmacy and it was nice. After getting released you would stop by the pharmacy on the way out and get all your meds and bandages.
All these crappy corporate stores are hellish. They destroyed local pharmacies, bookstores, stationery stores, lunch counters, blah blah blah.
Walmart and other big box stores selling Chinese junk have destroyed much of what we remember about when our country was nice.
In California especially bad. Because criminals don't get in trouble anymore unless the products is worth $500 or more
@@genevieve730people vacated mom and pop stores for cheaper prices, better selection and the convenience of one stop shopping. Think Walmart.
@ Yes I think I said that in some video. When trump initiates tariffs on China, and prices go up at big box stores that sell cheap Chinese products, Walmart and others will lose their business model. I am sad that people care more about saving a small amount of money vs supporting their country. I mainly buy from thrift stores and yard sales, I only buy insulin and milk from Walmart.
CVS saw Family Dollar and said "wait I can do that too"
Lol that's the first thing I thought. Sounds like DG
First thing I thought, too.
fr chain
I used to work there. It was always understaffed. I was doing 12 hour days 6 days a week. Back in like 2014.
Apparently, it's the new business model.
Understaffing is a massive problem everywhere. The "skeleton crew -2" corporate cost-cutting strategy has to be outlawed.
They'll just lobby to have that regulation removed, and write off the money they spent buying influence as a cost of doing business.
I work in healthcare and it’s particularly troubling to me every day how risky it is for patient safety. It’s stressful and very suboptimal. I remember the days when we had proper staffing, now it’s like one nurse for 40 patients. How is that even legal? Healthcare shouldn’t be for profit imo
@@PeachysMom I think a lot of it is to keep people demoralized and without energy, time, and money to actually fight these injustices; it's a vicious downward spiral. They want everyday people to be their slaves in every sense of the word. We can't own homes, we can't work jobs comfortably. It's just slavery.
That's so true. You end up working at a place and they lose workers but they won't replace them. They realize they can save money by making a few workers do it all. And then those few workers get burnt out/quit.
That’s how they make record profits.
Its what monopolies do. Both political parties allowed corporations to buy their competition until we wound up with two pharmacy corporations,. Four corporations control all the meat sold in America, and that's why food is so expensive now. No matter what you need, there is a monopoly that overcharges you with no fear of being undersold by a competitor. The prices have nothing to do with cost to manufacture and deliver.
Exactly. Which is why voting is an actual joke at this point. Well never have the same representation as giga corps.
America just voted for more of this I think.
@@phonkyfeel1all hail the shareholders
Its called Oligarchy not monopoly. It will be monopoly when Walgreens overtakes CVS or vice-versa.
@@AV-yn4lvThese companies typically work together in semi-covert ways. For the meat industries, the big meat manufacturers look at the same pricing data and, explicitly or not, agree with each other to all sell their products at the same price to avoid competition. They are essentially circumventing anti-competition laws.
I was out of a medication I needed and it wasn’t in stock in any nearby CVS or Walgreens stores. I talked to a very helpful pharmacist at a local independent pharmacy who would be able to fill it- but it would cost $700 because the independent pharmacy wasn’t in my network.
This is why monopolies or duopolies shouldn’t exist. When customers have no where else to go-companies have no incentive to offer better service. It’s a joke our government has let it go this far.
It’s on purpose.
Exactly. I hope RFK will change this. Such an injustice to patients and pharmacists.
Monopolies should not be allowed to exist.
@brgilman3334 no politician blue or red will help us 😂
@@brgilman3334lmfao you think he’ll help you get medication???? 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 that man hates actual medicine more than someone who’s lived in a forest alone their whole life. Glad you believe in some random thought you made up good luck with that one
This is a long comment, but worth a read. Around the height of Covid, I went to a CVS and witnessed a pharmacist have a complete manic breakdown.
It started when a customer in line asked the pharmacist, whom she was friendly with, how he was doing. The man exploded emotionally because he had found out that day, after he had been working double shifts for weeks, that he had been fired (over the phone no less). But they still wanted him to finish the week.
When the friendly, but shaken, customer said that she was going to call the DM on his behalf, he turned his ire onto her, screaming not to call anyone.
This man was having a complete mental crisis, and still had a line of frightened people to service.
I HAVE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THAT! I still think about that man sometimes. I sincerely hope that he's okay.
I hope so too.
@@OublietteTight I think people underestimate the extreme pressure employers can unload onto their staff. That guy should have had his ass kissed, instead of getting laid off. Anyway, thanks for reading my long comment!
@Nickyeyes I agree. I read through 100 + comments and over and over CVS employment policy is in the wrong.
Thank you for sharing this story. I’m glad they fired him & set him free of that madness.
You lied. It was not worth the read.
Im a unlicensed pharmacy tech and after 2 months ive been asked (i refused) to do many things against my training, i actually got written up the other day for not finishing my tasks after i left at my scheduled time because we were understaffed and over worked, i had to catch my bus or i would be walking 2 hours home. Mistakes are being made daily because corporate is completely disconnected from the reality of pharmacy, they need to up the pay and put money into more staff. The fact they made billions yet are systems run off 2005 java script and im new and already working 3 peoples jobs for less than they get paid at mcdonalds
I'm quitting soon as it's not worth the pay to be honest
Thank you for your comment. I have no doubt that even though you’ve been working there only a short time, you will be missed. I hope you responded to that write up, and you make a complaint to your state labor board and submit it. Who is asking you to do things that are against your training? Management, or the overworked pharmacists? When you say “against your training”, are they asking you to violate procedures that you were taught, or are they asking you to do things that require a pharmacist license? I wish you the best in your education and career. I think your parents must be very proud of you, and. you will go far in whatever field you choose.
@@genxx2724yes im thinking asking them to do things that require a licensed pharmacist to do .
I used to be a licensed pharmacy tech before the C word. I quit and did not renew my license b/c I did not want to do something which I was not legally able to do. And, yes, even back then, I was asked to do things which I was not legally licensed to do. I believe that I saved lives b/c I pointed out something to a licensed pharmacist that they didn't catch, b/c they relied too much on the computer and not past training - I started working when we still had to look up things in the books, not relying on a computer. And when I decided I was done, I was more of a sales clerk than using my pharmacy training.
Asking employees to do things contrary to their training seems to be very common.
My father was a Pharmacist manager 10 years ago at a CVS- he did the math and in order to meet the metrics CVS was pushing, he only had 7 seconds per prescription to check the prescription and fill it. When you factor in making sure its the right drug, the right dosage for weight, has no interactions with other drugs someone is prescribed, that the customer doesn't have questions about how to take it, or has questions about complicated insurance and discounts, it's a wonder more people don't die than already do. I can't imagine it's gotten any better since
Profits over people. A publicly traded company will kill you if it means $100 more in their pocket.
@@flamingcat5135 It's a grip but don't use it as a grip under
I'm sure they do and it's assumed it's because they're sick, not the pharmacist.
@@AS-oj3cwIf someone dies because CVS prioritizes speed and profit over letting their pharmacist make sure a prescription isn't going to kill someone, isn't that wrong? How many times have you taken a medication without consciously looking at it to make sure they put the right pill in the right bottle? How is a regular person supposed to know if two prescriptions they take might interact and kill them? More to your point- obviously sick people take meds and then some will die from their illness. But how many deaths might have been entirely preventable? I think if a company is selling you a medication that they have to make sure it's the right one.
Also why you shouldn't eat out at restaurants. They don't pay their servers so they have to wait on as many tables as possible to make some actual money. It's all turn and burn so quality and cleanliness go right out the window.
The funny thing about "understaffed"? When I worked for a pharmacy, I had a ton of hours available, but would get 4-8 hours a week and when I was scheduled it was me and a shift leader closing. We had plenty of people, it was corporate who didn't want to allow the hours for employees to work.
Probably because then they’d have to cover health insurance and have some sort of benefits package, but if they keep a bunch of people working short hours, they don’t have to do any of that
@@amber88565 - We had 14 part-time people in addition to the full-time shift leads and managers. Almost every part-time employee got between 4-12 hours a week no matter how available someone was. Someone who was available anytime was given closer to 12 hours a week while me being available weekends anytime and weekdays after 6 PM, I got mostly 4 hours a week sometimes 8 hours a week. No part-time employee was anywhere near close to the hours to qualify for benefits.
@@amber88565 This is why we need Medicaid for all.
Understaffing needs to be counted as illegal and counted as a safety risk.
Companies need to stop cutting corners for profits and stop cutting labor.
I'm not for either side currently as both have lots of flaws, but the republican party is infamous for lobbying for less and less industry regulations...it makes it easier to make profit at all cost and get away with questionable practices without much pushback
The district managers cut staffing hours at stores so they can get bigger bonuses. I know this for a fact.
@@Chopsuey087agree with this TRUEEE
but, do you really think, on a Federal level, anyone is going to do anything about it?
I fear that on the contrary, working conditions will worsen.
...what happened to OSHA?
I love the free market where I as a consumer can only choose between massive soulless companies
The free market where your choice is bad service or bad service or hey, bad service.
Line go up.
There are still a few mom and pop pharmacy businesses around. I know it doesn't help the systemic issue, but still.
This is Not a free market. This is corporate oligarchy
It's called vote for the right people.
@@marvinhareunless we can get a Ron Paul or a Bernie Sanders, this is what we get.
I worked at cvs for 7 years. I can confirm that everything in this video is true. Short to no staffing, impossible workloads and vaccine goals, unrealistic metrics, etc. I remember during peak covid, the pharmacist was giving a shot every 10 minutes while doing regular work with little to no help. Staff turnover was incredibly high and the management was extremely toxic
Our cvs pharmacy has also cut hours and closes for lunch now too. Understaffed much?
I worked there for 8. It was incredibly depressing being so consistently under-staffed, feeling like no matter how hard I worked, nothing would ever get done. Expectations constantly increased or changed, and hours were cut more and more. The district and regional managers were actual sociopaths who only cared about power and profit, and that was just the front store. It's an unsustainable, evil way to run a business. I hope the company fails, and independent pharmacies make a comeback. I haven't set foot in one since I quit with no notice over 5 years ago.
And we all suffer for it.
THANK YOU, front line medical here got Covid and had to jump hoops to get off from work and then back to work. Y'all got real 'nosey'. My local CVS is a miracle but they work their fingers to the bone. Walgreens same. Back room handshake deals, algorithms funneling to meds from dentistry and OTC benefits... yikes.
Scary 😢
I used to work for CVS as a cashier in the front store, and I will say it isn't as bad as what the pharmacy goes through but it wasn't nice in any capacity working for that company. I was always stressed and dreading work. I used to work at a high volume store (high traffic) and would have to take care of customers, clean, stock, open cases, fix any issues at the self checkout, and anything the store manager decides to pile on. I had to do all this with one manager and no one else to help and typically the managers were almost never on the floor. My last day working was black friday when the store manager decided to leave as soon as I showed up for my shift and told me tough luck as she left me completely alone to run the store and I was not allowed to close the store. long story short, a lot of people noticed I was alone and the situation quickly devolved into a looting situation and I didn't feel safe and decided that was my last shift. I happened to work in a store in Ohio and heard a few weeks later that Ohio smacked them with the lawsuit and it honestly brought me a little joy to hear that someone was actually doing something about the situation.
People must take their business elsewhere and never ever, regardless of how hard it will be, and never step in these places again. There will be so much trouble when everyone revolts. Stop the madness and savagery now. Quit attending these places!
This looting etc. will happen more often sadly but puts you/the workers in harms way. Scary. I'd have locked up called the boss and left. This is unsafe working conditions. Unions need to be brought in. I'd NEVER work there.
I’m very sorry you had to deal with that situation. I worked at Walgreens and it was a 24 hour store and my mom was always concerned when I was there past 10pm because of the crack headed stuff that was going on. Third shift was almost always late or never came in, so I ended up being there past 10 a lot. I would have to call my slack ass manager who was smoking in the back to please come to the front so I could leave at 10:30pm. It would be a few times I had to call. Only had one manager who would come up there when it got a little past 10pm to let me go. The slack ass manager actually told me that me and the one guy who would always come to our shifts promptly, were not that helpful because we wouldn’t stay after our actual shift. That’s funny, because I almost always came in for an extra shift. It’s bs. They were putting it on the people who actually showed up because the others didn’t want to show up. I was a doormat. My manager mainly gave me 7am-3pm and 2pm-10pm shifts. With the high turnover, there were times he schedule 2-10 one day and 7-3 the next day. Barely got sleep and was binge eating. Took an internship and got up out that hell hole. A lot of the people I worked with had loser behavior and were big bullies. Pharmacy would also tell me about all the horrible stuff they were going through and I’m so sorry they were even dealing with that. I’ve honestly become more depressed the more I think about our working conditions and how these psychopaths in charge are treating us like robots. We’re not meant to live this way!
I feel your pain. I've worked at CVS, Walgreens, and now a branch of Albertsons. I briefly worked at a brand new location for a bit, and there was one shift where I was literally the only employee in the entire store. I felt scared for my own safety. I had a checkout line stretching across the store, people yelling at me to open another checkout not realizing there was literally no other employees in the store, and nobody to relieve me when my shift ended. I clocked out that day and never returned. These retail giants don't give a damn about their employees, only their bottom line. I was a newb then, but nowadays if I were presented with that situation, I would've just closed the store and went home 😂
Corruption and corporate greed has destroyed this nation and our people.
The FTC is responsible for preventing monopolies like this. CVS was allowed to buy Aetna b/c Joseph J. Simons (Head of FTC at the time, appointed by TRUMP) allowed it to go through.
The current head of the FTC, Lina Khan, would have NEVER allowed this to happen. Unfortunately, she will be fired by Trump in January and replaced by someone who only looks out for big business and not US citizens.
And we just decided "more please!"
It's capitalism. Corruption and greed are inevitable symptoms of that root problem.
@@elonmusksellssnakeoil1744Bingo, although I expect to hear the right start fumbling excuses soon enough.
Period.
As someone who worked as a supervisor at CVS at 636 6th Ave. in New York, New York I can say without a shadow of a doubt that CVS do not care about their customers and they do not care about the employees. CVS is the largest health insurance in America or the second largest and they never provided adequate or no healthcare to the employees.
Former call center employee this is true and sad
It's a joke we get such crap Aetna insurance....even though we bought them and provide literal front line healthcare.....but people on state aid get better than us who work.
A few too many 6's in that address...
Insurance is a scam.
Why would they run the scam on themselves?
For those curious for more details:
They know the True Costs of the Industry and have decided the only way to 'cover' those costs is to *deny payouts* to everyone involved. Not just the people who need medical coverage, being told they have to pay for it themselves, but they also *underpay* the medical side of things! Hospitals only get a fraction of the costs, and have to absorb the rest somehow, just so Insurance Companies can keep pocketing billions each year.
Another group that is getting rammed even harder by this model is... the pharmacists.
If they are the Insurance Provider and the Pharmaceutical, how can they undermine themselves?
The entire medical field needs to get rid of these 'Insurance based' Parasites!
@@ThatGuyGregHDdon't get mad at ppl who get state aid get mad at cvs corp
Profit as the only measure of success will degrade every aspect of humanity
Perfectly stated. Thank you. 💛
Mission accomplished!
Pharmacy Technicians are also paid poorly, worked hard, treated poorly, expected to work 8+ hour shifts with no breaks or lunch, given no rewards for their hard work, pressured to get more work done than is possible in the time allotted.. and so on.
None of the pharmacy techs I work with can even afford their own apartments. It's sad, I feel bad for them.
Internally, CVS and Walgreens consider themselves to be primarily real estate companies due to the amount of retail space they control. They're publicly traded so they'll ignore everything but profitability.
The McDonald’s model
end stage capitalism baby. rack up money and move it all to another country before the economy you exploited collapses.
@@burchified This isn't capitalism this is a form of globalist socialism known as facsism.
Not true though, Walgreens leases a ton of their locations...
@@tijli1316 Yeah, but they still own a lot of real estate.
Oh look, shareholders making everything worse, again. Again. And again.
Don’t blame the player, blame the game.
Well..... government regulations are supposed to protect us from this. Unfortunately, we keep voting in a president that only cares about making more money.
The FTC is responsible for preventing monopolies like this. CVS was allowed to buy Aetna b/c Joseph J. Simons (Head of FTC at the time, appointed by TRUMP) allowed it to go through.
The current head of the FTC, Lina Khan, would have NEVER allowed this to happen. Unfortunately, she will be fired by Trump in January and replaced by someone who only looks out for big business and not US citizens.
if you have a 401k or any type of investment/retirement plan. that makes you a shareholder as well. the system has been designed to make the average person act against their best interests. hey who cares if a car crash that wasnt your fault bankrupts you, as long as the economy is good
@@jtjoemamma Shareholders mean you have active shares in the business that is enough to let you have a voice on the board. So, no. 401k's and investment/retirement plans do not count.
fcuk the shareholders
As someone who just quit retail forever! I totally understand. They constantly made me work by myself and would complain payroll is to high even though I was almost always working by myself.
Companies need to be barred from this “I’ll hire 3 people to work different shifts” for 30hrs each, meanwhile each employee is working 3 of these jobs for 3 different companies.
They need to be forced to hire full time workers and pay benefits.
That is what they refuse to do. No benefits for the slaves
!
I worked retail during the first year of Covid. I was working by myself most of the time because we wanted to reduce the risk of multiple staff being infected. There were days I didn't have a moment to eat, and of course had loads of work left to do after the doors were locked for the night. Now I have a lot of food avoidant issues and just general retail PTSD. It took me years to recover from the permanent "deer in headlights" feeling working like caused in me.
@@ChrisLincoln Then they realized they were making record profits with less people and worked to keep it that way. A lot of stores with false hiring to make it seem like they're open to workers but no ones hiring and the stores are unmanned. This is why they're desperate to get AI anything to work (or lower paid migrants or children, child labor is coming back!)
What about hiring all the illegals these corporations want so desperately? They can hire three for the price of one American, so why don't they?
My mother was 99 years old and broke her hip. The hospital gave her a prescription for pain medication and we went to CVS, but the pharmacy was closed. I called the doctor and asked how she could get her prescription filled and the answer was that we were better off waiting until the next day (it was 6 PM at this point) because none of the supposed 24-hour pharmacies actually had pharmacists on duty. The next day CVS couldn't fill it because there was only one pharmacist able to dispense the medication and they were busy with injections. I came back later in the day and they again asked me to come back later for some reason that I don't remember. I know our healthcare is about everything except taking care of people (no money in that), but have tried to avoid CVS ever since.
Every company is worse than it was 10 years ago. Nothing has gotten better, only worse.
And it's only going to keep getting worse because No matter who gets elected, the wealthy get their way Because they pump ungodly amounts of money into both sides of any given election
Because we accept it. Just like we agree to do the cashier's job by using the self checkout (without receiving any compensation), we've shown that we'll still patronize businesses that provide crappy service. There's no incentive for these companies to improve, when they give us less and we still line their coffers with cash.
I literally blame the corporations that have been taking over pharmacies, Veterinaries, hospitals, dental offices, etc, etc! Disgusting
Donald Trump had a pretty significant hand in these changes. Hope you didn't vote for him and can ride out the disaster that follows because the next 4 years are going to be rough.
Amazon is better than it was 10 years ago. I no longer wait in lines at CVS as it's delivered right to my door. ALL my prescribed medications were cheaper at Amazon Pharmacy than CVS without even needing to apply insurance discounting (i.e. it's cheaper than insurance). And CVS has been around a lot longer than Amazon Pharmacy, which started in late 2020.
I can confirm this. No staff and the pharmacy dept is overworked, and driven crazy with customer load. This has been going on for + 5 to 6 years now. It’s horrible. The pharmacists are heros considering the crap company they work for. FLORIDA HERE
This has been the corporate norm for 40 years. It's getting more visible. Ever hear politicians talk about socialism or people looking for a handout? It's billionaires with their hands held out wanting more.
Confirm this as well in NYC multiple locations from Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn
With this new administration you're going to wait a lot longer...
@@wayneroberts6642 you speak so absolutely! It’s as if you know!!
I was assaulted by a CVS pharmacy worker last year when I was just trying to pick up a prescription! She was pissed off and chose to take it out on me. And the manager said it was the 5th time she’d done that to a customer.
The world is rapidly going towards a sci-fi dystopia where there are only handful of mega corps left with no competition.
Your only hope is to move to rural towns where it is not worth having one of these mega corporations.
that is and always was the goal for every capitalist.
@ohiasdxfcghbljokasdjhnfvaw4ehr you know the late universe theory where it expands so much that things would get too spaced out to see? Cuz this reminded me of that
Already there. Boil it down, and you'll find a lot of the same shareholders behind the mega corps were have now.
Modern day umbrella corporation.
I was a store manager at CVS for 3 years. I reported everything you’re seeing to HR, and it didn’t go well for me. All of this is true.
If pharmacies are effectively a public service, they should not be on the stock market where "growth", meaning continual shareholder profits, is the only actual goal. An effective service doesn't need to grow, it only needs to be sustainable. Endless growth is not sustainable, something always has to be squeezed, in this case it is the employees and the public who rely on pharmacy services. We need to band together and make pharmacies a real public service, accountable to the people, that we can rely on.
Underrated comment
What you’ve said seems to be the issue.
@@madelinehoyle1059 pharma is a product, for consumers. Businesses, albeit corporate or small(mom/pop) are at the risk of profit margins. Gas stations don’t profit much on fuel, but they get you in the store to buy more…
Not saying you’re wrong.
Pharma might be the issue.
Right , totally different in Europe , no retail just pharmacies and associated meds
pharmacies, hospitals, anything to do with medical care should be public services. Going further, they're overall job should be to actually make themselves less necessary overtime. Growth at all costs means they are incentivized to put more people on more prescriptions, put more people on low-grade treatment plans rather than actually trying to fix the issues we can fix. The mechanism through which we accomplish that is left to future discussions, but I think we need that for healthcare, police, and possibly some other services as well.
I approve 100%. I was a pharmacist at Walgreens, just as bad as CVS. I left because I am afraid I would kill or harm my patients. Working condition is absolutely terrible.
Pharmacies should only be in medical facilities.. then they can’t push over the counter junk too.
i was given four wrong prescrips at walgreens from two different stores. i wrote about it in this forum.
We switched from CVS to Walgreens a few years ago. The one time I went inside the Walgreens to pick something up that wasn't a prescription, the cashier was the rudest (and possibly racist) I've ever seen. She was just berating this little old Haitian lady in line in front of me because she couldn't understand her. Calling her a problem, lecturing her, scolding her, it went on and on. I tried to find somebody to talk to about her, but there was literally nobody else in sight in the entire store. So I came back, stuck whatever it was I was buying on the counter, and told her exactly why I was leaving without buying it. I wish I could have done more, but god. If that's how they treat their customers who haven't done a single thing wrong?
Anyway, we go to an independent pharmacy now.
My local one closed and forced me to Kroger. My pharmacist did notice a doctor prescribed three medications the could and did cause serotonin syndrome. Had he not known my husband my sight, and told him tell her to stop taking this since the doctors refused to call him, it could have been fatal...his name was Tim. He was a good man. I suspect he doesn't work for them anymore. If you're out there Tim....thanks. You saved me. The doctors refused to listen to me when I told them what you said and told me to follow the directions. I obviously don't have them as doctors anymore!
Im glad you're okay and Tim was looking out for you!
God Bless All Pharmacists 👨🔬👩🔬
this is a giant problem to me, the doctors should be charged for attempted murder & held accountable since they are paid so well and so educated yet most doctors dont seem to give a rats booty about their patients here in the us 😭
I'm sorry but I'm having a really hard time parsing your comment. Do you think you could clarify your language a bit better? Regardless, I'm happy you're okay!
@@StoutShako Tim the pharmacist helped them by pointing out a bad interaction with their medications (that or the meds themselves caused the serotonin syndrome). Their actual doctor(s) that prescribed the meds on the other hand refused to listen to the poster when they told him what Tim said about serotonin syndrome; the doctors instead just said to follow the directions on the medication. They have since switched doctors
Corporate greed IS the major problem with the American standard of living. They squeeze everything possible and give nothing to the employees that run things
This needs to go viral. Pharmacies need to take accountability and address this.
Not pharmacies themselves - the corporations that run them and have that huge disconnect between the reality of what pharmacies face versus the metrics corporations push. It’s how big companies can avoid direct accountability and put the blame on staff/humans running the places rather than the entities. We need not to blame the overworked people suffering - we need to push for better work environments everywhere without greed/corp profit as the motivator.
@thebrightphoenixx true. The people in the stores aren't responsible for this. I oversimplified my comment. It's the corporations.
I worked at Walgreens in the pharmacy. They operate the same way CVS does and they’ve been doing this since waaay before the pandemic. Overworking, underpaying, ignoring employee feedback galore. Now they all are like :0 but I’m just smiling and watching them burn. As a taste, we would get in trouble if our phone calls with patients lasted more than 30 seconds. That’s how time crunched we were, so if you were on the phone with someone in the pharmacy and you felt rushed and like they didn’t care, it’s because we were constantly getting flagged over phone calls over 31 seconds lol
Walgreens almost killed my mom twice by failing to get her insulin until after she complains about not having any. Sadly for that specific kind that goes in her device insurance only goes through Walgreens or something stupid like that. So she's at the Mercy of them and it's honestly really scary. She's been to the ER for diabetic related issues at least 3 times this past year and that's just this year there's more times last year.
Dennis Miller wrote an eye opening book back in 2012 (Pharmacy Exposed: 1,000 Things That Can Go Deadly Wrong At the Drugstore). These chains look at a prescription error and the potential lawsuit as a calculated risk. What’s cheaper? Fully staffing their stores OR paying out the occasional wrongful death lawsuit where they put ALL the blame on the overworked pharmacist. I was a certified pharmacy technician from 2003 to 2020. My breaking point was being stuck at the cash register, phones ringing non stop and my pharmacist running around trying to enter in the new prescriptions, bill insurances, fill the prescriptions, AND make sure she didn’t make any mistakes. Watching her I just knew we were set up to fail and I couldn’t be apart of the system any more. I let my license and certification expire. I never want to step foot behind a pharmacy counter again.
question. where do you currently go when you need a prescription filled or vaccine given? i’d like go somewhere else to lessen the burden on those chain pharmacies
I can answer that for you. If your insurance can and allow mail order for chronic medications, do it. Usually mail order allows up to 90-day fill. Otherwise, if it’s something urgent or as simple as getting an antihistamine or antibiotic for short term treatment, there’s no point doing the mail order.
As far as vaccines are concerned, that can be tricky. It’s tricky because of insurance. Most vaccines given in physician/PCP can cost you up front; however, if you choose to have your vaccine done at a pharmacy sometimes it might cost you less or even with no copay at all.
Here’s just my suggestion: If your insurance dictates you must get your vaccines at a pharmacy, make sure you go online and make an appointment. Upload all your insurance information beforehand because this will save everyone time and headache. If you need series of shots it is better to go back to that pharmacy where you got your initial dose. And remember, your pharmacy card is different from your medical insurance card. For example, pharmacy card will contain information, such as SUBSCRIBER ID, RXBIN/BIN, RXPCN, RXGRP.
Hope this helps😊
@@levelsofdifficultyI don’t get any of the annual vaccines but I would prefer having it done at my doctor’s office. I only have 1 prescription and I still have it filled where I used to work (until my pharmacist leaves then I’ll transfer to an independent or Costco). I use the app to refill my prescription early because they special order my brand and I give them at least a week to get that done.
@@jpman2173I refuse to do mail order for medications. There is zero quality control during shipment in contrast to the strict regulations that follow medications from manufacturer to the pharmacy. It is huge problem for sensitive medications. I'm not gambling my health with an unregulated courier.
@@meganashlea
Why Costco?
Every time I go into a Walgreens or CVS, or Target for that matter, I feel like they’re pushing us all to buy everything online. But I hate buying everything online. I want to see the thing in person and make sure I’m getting the thing I want. I want to talk to the pharmacist and not have it accidentally shipped to my last apartment that CVS still has on file even though I updated it on their website (you have to call and talk to someone to get it changed on the pharmacy portion of your account.) I feel terrible for the staff.
Using profit as the sole indicator of success will diminish all facets of human existence.
The people who work in the pharmacy told me CVS understaffs the pharmacy on purpose. I stopped going to CVS a year ago when my pharmacist, who's usually a great person, was so wound up I thought she was going to explode. It was difficult to be around someone who was that unhappy, plus service had gone downhill, which is why I quit going there.
This. I used to work there. Basically how it works is corporate will give you a total number of hours for the managers schedule techs to work each week, but those hours are nowhere enough.
We are open for 12 hours on weekdays and 8 hours in weekends which means the pharmacy is open 76hours a week. But corporate will only let us schedule techs for up to 80 hours a week across all techs. Meaning we cant even have 2 techs at all time, the hours are spread THIN. Our store fills about 500 prescriptions a day BY HAND, and we're constantly running around trying to answer phone calls, pickup, drive thru, and we get dinged by corporate if we let anything sit in the queue for more than 15minutes.
@@kspade1788exactly! And that’s why the customer service is so terrible because people are worried about not getting dinged by corporate and possibly losing their jobs due to “lack of performance”. The customers will always lose in these situations
Yeah a few years ago both CVS and Walgreens went from "you can pick up your prescription in 15 minutes" to you can get it in three days if you're lucky.
@@BlueCyann My neighborhood Walgreens says "allow3 days" but usually have refills ready the next day. New scripts, it varies. The location always seems like it would be faster and more efficient if they had one more pharm tech.
The less hours a store gets, the more the district managers quarterly bonus is.
This after CVS jacked up their prices on all OTC medicine, skincare, and hygiene products ... and they keep many items behind glass. None of the savings from short staffing is passed down to the customer.
Medicine should not be for profit.
Especially insulin!! Its so expensive to live.
There needs to be market incentive for health solutions
@@janelleg597.... no, there really doesn't. How much of the Kool-Aid do you need to have consumed to come to a conclusion like this????
Albert Bruce Sabin, responsible for developing the oral Polio vaccine, did so without filing for a patent -- believe it or not, people do and make things for the sake of that thing existing. Polio *SUCKS* , and it doesn't take a profit motive for people to think "we should figure out how to prevent and/or cure this".
Good lord, man, please think critically about the ideology of the owning class - it's a cancer.
@@janelleg597 no there fucking doesnt. you have your taxes pay for it just like any normal country does
Neither should education or prisons. Or (coming soon) the military.
>"Nobody wants to work anymore!"
>Apply for job there
>(silence)
Weird how they keep doing this
It’s all optics.
They won't pay enough to draw more workers, either.
They have to pretend they're hiring so they fulfill the covid business loan/grant requirements. Many companies will collect resumes and do interviews even when they are not hiring because they want to have names to pull when a current employee leaves.
@@cynicalcindy1434 This was an issue before covid. I, for example, applied over 50 times for Starbucks and no response. None at all.
They are trying to gaslight everybody into thinking that they are just too lazy and not that the companies are screwing them over
*CVS:* _”What if we ran a pharmacy like a Dollar General?”_ 😂
I am a pharmacist working for another national chain which has prioritized staffing and safety over the past few years following COVID. We have seen consistent sales increases and much happier customers and patients. It’s not paradise but it’s a very respectable and satisfying career, as it should be. Every day we transfer in a considerable number of prescriptions from Walgreens and CVS and we would transfer more of the PBMs didn’t get in the way.
My insurance (actually not Aetna) specifically requires me to use CVS, both brick-and-mortar and mail (Caremark). Saying "just go independent" doesn't reflect the reality of how these companies put a stranglehold on the patient.
Same. Anthem BCBS for me.
I had the same experience until I told my program provider that I would pay out of pocket and file a complaint with consumer agencies in my state. Two days later they told me to use the local independent as I had been doing before. They dislike turbulence more than forced consumerism.
sounds like your fault for agreeing to such shitty insurance terms. stop blaming other ppl for your bad decisions
@@cloudnine5651chill out on the boot man, it cant taste that good
@cloudnine5651 You know some people don't have a choice when they get insurance through their employer, right? That's the main way to get insurance is to have a job!
This message is so important to get out there because so many people don't care about something until they know how it affects them or a loved one.
Yeah but at the same time imagine the effect that CVS has on the US... making medicine accessible to so many people across the nation. Imagine they started closing stores, it would make it so much harder for people to get their meds.
I guess the "American Experiment" is how low can we go until people start eating the rich. 🍴
Why wait?
Yeah why wait. They can only get more juicy. Long pig back on the menu.
It's sadly the same game in every society with highly pyramidal leadership.
Monarchs, religious leaders, dictators, the owner class - no matter the name, they're the same evil, only wearing different hats.
The experiment is finally done, it failed.
@@grmpEqweer I don't like the wording, but "eat the rich" is a slogan. It includes things like fully taxing them instead if just to letting them evade taxes or lobbying politicians for it. It's taking back the millions of dollars many rich people and corporations stole from the people. Etc.
I suggest watching More Perfect Union and Second Thought on how rich businesses stole millions of dollars in wage theft and how wage theft is the biggest theft.
Watch the Market Exit.
As a former employee, cvs was short staffed and a problem before covid in 2020.
exactly. they need stop blaming covid for everything.
The pharmacy I used to go to was dangerously understaffed in 2019. The pandemic just gave the corporations cover.
CVS pharmacy has been understaffed and abusing pharmacists for years. I remember watching an exposé several years ago - maybe even longer than that. It might have even been in 2002 or 2003.
The entire pharmaceutical industry is understaffed now just CVS after Covid, no one wants to be in contact with the virus or another one that could emerge.
So you're saying it's not true that the pandemic cause a labor shortage? You can literally see that everywhere.
@@Teresa-n5sthe “labor shortage” is what they want you to think. They are intentionally saying they are hiring and that nobody wants to work, while filtering out 100% of applications and working their skeleton crews to the bones for profit.
It’s all for shareholder profit and lining their pockets any way they can. And if they can get you to think it’s because of a labor shortage that doesn’t exist, it gives them the scapegoat to keep doing this downright evil shit to real, hardworking people just trying to do right by their fellow people.
@@Teresa-n5s specifically in CVS they said the pandemic is not the sole reason; they are purposefully keeping their staff understaffed as said in the video too. Because money :/
I know a guy who’s been in rehab for years, he was supposed to be given a month’s supply of Suboxone, but was mistakenly given a month’s supply of methadone. A powerful synthetic opiate. He easily could have died if he was in a different place, emotionally or mentally.
I successfully sued CVS back in the early 2000’s for some bs cutting corners that nearly destroyed my (then) 6 month old child’s brain. Spanked them, and never went back.
Before the pandemic my mom was taking weight loss meds. The meds had a warning not to take them for more than 6 months, something nobody ever told her as she ended up taking them for more than a year. After stopping her meds her health went back to normal.
@@phonkyfeel1 I'm so sorry. My own mom is still furious and shaken more than a decade after a psychiatrist tried to prescribe me a highly addictive medication meant to treat an entirely different set of symptoms than what was described. If she wasn't a pharmacy tech who knew immediately how wrong the prescription was, things would have gone very badly for me at a very young age. That isn't even touching on the number of other medical professionals that dismissed my issues earlier because "obviously this first time mom is just paranoid and exaggerating" despite her professional background. Our healthcare system needs reform. It's unacceptable to ignore, mistreat, or mishandle the treatment of adults, god forbid children. Your child deserved better, I deserved better, and all the mothers out there bearing the burden of their sick children suffering at the hands of greedy corporations and apathetic governments deserve better
Suboxone is a powerful synthetic opiate. Either methadone or suboxone will do the same thing for an addict.
I’m doubting your story though because methadone is only administered to addicts in a clinical setting whereas suboxone can be administered at home.
@jackstraw262 methadone can also be prescribed by a doctor and filled at a pharmacy. It usually comes in 10mg or 40mg tablets. The methadone clinics dispense liquid methadone.
Reading this as a Norwegian is horrifying. Filling a prescription is a totally foreign concept here, you just go to whatever (online) pharmacy, they check your ID in the government prescription system, and they give you your meds and advice. Are you really being locked into the pharmacies your doctor decides?? Free market my ass.
I live in America. You think you're horrified? I'm watching my country destroy itself. Anybody that's in charge of anything from big companies to little stores is hell bent I'm coming up with a new way of doing things that doesn't work. You couldn't even imagine how insane this country has become. Most of us went from living pretty good lives to just trying to survive in a broken world. It's honestly gotten so bad a lot of people are in shock and still can't believe what's going on. What's going on with CVS is extremely Petty and nothing to worry about compared to all the really messed up stuff that's going on.
Freedom European-style is freedom to eat healthy food, access health care as needed, walk or bike in safety, and not worry about your kids getting shot in school.
Freedom US-style is corporations doing whatever the f they want and if that kills people, dying is the price of freedom.
No, you can tell your doctor where to send the prescription... it's your insurance company that tells you which ones you're allowed to pick. Different kind of horrifying.
I wish my great-grandfather hadn't moved from Norway to the US...... Because now I'm stuck here in this corporate Hell.
Yeah it's the same in Canada. You bring the paper or they send the prescription to the pharmacy of your choice, which can be a chain or an independent, whatever you want. I've been to several different pharmacies in the area for prescriptions, all depending on what errands I wanted to run. The idea of being "locked into" a pharmacy chain could easily be completely smashed through health and strong gov't intervention in the healthcare system in the US.
But it won't be, because that's not what voters in the US want.
I refuse to step foot in a cvs, or walgreens. They are both always understaffed and chaotic, and it was obvious to me that they weren't paying their employees enough money. So I'm glad to spend a bit more and use my locally owned pharmacy--that would be Jolley's, owned by Ben Jolley in my hometown of Salt Lake City.
Profits over human lives.
This is monster that will just grow and grow.
Yep, and the only people with the power to do anything about are bribed with the profits.
the root of all evil is money. which does not mean money is evil, but the greedy acquisition more & more money by already rich people 🙈🙉🙊
@@SuperMadman41 wealthy are basically drug addicts for money where they do anything just see small increase in wealth.
Honestly, it’s not much different from what these pro-union campaigns are doing! The people in charge are still making a profit off the workers they’re supposed to represent.
Remember when Walgreens invested $50 million in Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. Then acted like they weren't stupid enough to do that. Your health, their wealth‼️
Im an independent and both red and blue sides have many flaws but it irks me when hard core Republicans say "we want government off our backs" and "we don't want more regulation", which means let me do whatever I want to make money, without caring about consequences to the people, that translates into questionable companies doing questionable things and trying to dodge inspections and settling out of court to be able to keep on making profit at all costs...
"We need to keep our hours down" is exactly what we hear in all healthcare facilities. Working as a CNA in Montana, we would hear, "We need to low census someone" because we had one less patient than corporate wanted that day to have 6 CNAs. So, we would end up with roughly a 1:13 CNA to patient ratio. Trust me when I say that having one more CNA for the patients is an absolute life saver. All because we would float from 66 to 65 patients. SOMETIMES, if we had 65 long enough, we were allowed 6 aides for a few days.
Wow, it's different in Texas. I quit overnight, ratio 1:25 with baths and leftover meal assistance to those that needed it. Day was allowed 3, but they never finished bed changes, meals, or logs.
@@101kurtj i am the only cna in here
@@101kurtj I got them rainbow colors and my cup Manos jolly ranchers be good as f***
As a CVS employee, and as someone who watches my mom work for CVS too. This is all but true. Its actually stupid how much CVS gets away with, at one point there was 3 front store employees manning the cash registers because the techs were so far behind on filling. My mom worked for CVS for 5 years and about 2 of those years was in pharmacy, and it was so sad to see her so tired and overworked. I work in front store and let me tell you, it is not easy, even with TWO employees everyday! I cannot even imagine some of these other comments where its only one person! Thats not only not allowed but dangerous. And people still seem to get mad at the employees for (Heres a list of things ive been yelled at for): Coupons not working, things being locked up, peices being too high, not enough help. Etc. I never understood why people get mad at the enployees for those things, and not at the fucking abouslutly massive company that sucks ass. Unfortunately i cant quit right now, but as soon as im able to i am. The ONLY reason im putting a two weeks in and not ghosting is cause my store manager is actually really cool and i dont wanna fuck him over like cvs is already doing to him
I was a pharmacy tech for 13 years until I left to get my degree in medical science.
My mom is a pharmacist. This video is 💯 and its not just CVS. Its literally every chain pharmacy. Sadly I knew one pharmacist to pass away from the stress and another to have a nervous breakdown. Several more that I didn't know well had some kind of stress related health issues and left the field. Its a horrible job. I used to want to be a pharmacist. After my college got delayed I realized that I hated how the industry had become and I changed to something else partly due to these issues.
Its horrible healthcare.
There are many other countries glad to welcome health care workers tired of being abused in the US. You and your colleagues all need to consider your options.
Lean staffing is only appealing to the eyes of corporate leaders and shareholders.
Literally everyone else suffers for it.
Indeed. Don't stock holders need prescriptions too? Don't they see what the company is now thru their own experiences?
Most of the sharholders are huge investment firms.
Those are owned by other businesses and it’s turtles all the way down.
So no, the shareholders don’t buy prescriptions.
@xanovaria or they do not know their true connection? Eventually everyone needs medicine, even over the counter.
Turtles all the way down! 💫 🤗 😝
You may want to investigate CVS' crazy policy to allow people to go into their store, load their bags with whatever catches their eyes and just walk out escorted by the third party security guy. I asked him why he did not stop the thief? He told me their policy was to not stop them. I was dumbfounded. What legal fear when someone is stealing your product??? I don't want to live in a country where this is tolerated. Why pay more money for extra security and then just allow whomever to walk in and take stuff???
Because the security does not have the police power to detain. Trying to detain someone - even a thief - is illegal. Similarly, trying to use physical force against someone committing a crime that won't physically hurt you is still assault. Both of these can get the company sued.
Its cheaper to keep a list of who is stealing what, and then go to the police when it reaches a felony level than it is to risk lawsuits from shoplifters.
You are uncovering critical information! Keep up the good work.
Excellent work on this one - Ohio Pharmacist. However to add some clarification to the recent regulations in Ohio, it has yet to be seen if the new rules will have any tangible benefit for pharmacists and staffs in regard to workload/understaffing. Pharmacists can request help without retaliation, but the company isn't required to provide it; corporate is only tasked with maintaining a procedure for staffing requests. A previous iteration of the regulation would have set a minimum requirement for pharmacy staff, however, employers managed to axe it in favor of the language in the final proposal. I don't work for CVS anymore, but rather a local grocery chain and the issues addressed here are present in almost every aspect of retail pharmacy. I fear nothing short of federal anti-trust legislation will be enough to right the ship and prevent further vertical integration of pharmacy.
This was among my thoughts as well when that was highlighted in the video. "How exactly do these new regulations work, and are they actually going to change anything, and does it not have enough enforcement behind it to be effective?"
How can pharmacists be protected from retaliation when the company will just make up some other reason they were fired?
@@JaniceinOR Yes, exactly. As a pharmacist, you often have to make decisions that aren't black and white. Companies can go back through what you've done and point something out that goes against their policies, which I guarantee almost all pharmacists have done at some point.
@@ironsquid9724 I checked the text of the "Pharmacists Fight Back" bill and it has a rule where the US Attorney General can unilaterally dismiss any accusation made against a PBM for any reason. lolsob. Also it was referred to committee back in July and nothing's happened since so it seems unlikely to pass to begin with.
There will be no federal legislation even marginally in favor of the worker (or customer) for at least four years.
it feels alike a bill saying "hey stop being bad" won't cut it.
Healthcare is a Textbook example of a "Market Failure".
Any for-profit approach is doomed to fail.
I was a CVS Pharmacy Technician for 3 years (from 2016-2019) and I will say that this video is 100% spot on. The pharmacy staff was always under so much pressure. High volume of prescriptions, unrealistic goals to fill those prescriptions, meds constantly on back order, and we were always understaffed because the company constantly cut our hours in order to cut costs. We would receive many complaints from customers, but received no support from corporate to fix these issues. This was a TERRIBLE company to work for. I always tell my peers to avoid working for CVS. They do not take care of their employees. The day that I quit and walked out in the middle of my shift was the best decision for my health, well being, and my sanity. I’ve never looked back since.
I worked at cvs right out of pharmacy school, and the only reason i got a lunch break was because they got sued through a class action lawsuit. I worked a 12-hour shift, and 10 of those hours are by myself. So when i had to close the pharmacy to take a 30 minutes lunch, Sure enough when i came back, there were always people pissed off because they had to wait. It was the worse job I've ever had. I couldn't quit since i had student loans of around 200k . This was more than 10 years ago, the amount rphs are graduating with now a days i can imagine have only sky rocketed. Now that i have kids, i will definitely warn them to not take this career path. As a medical professional, you don't make that much either, currently most of my paycheck goes towards daycare for the kids. Thankfully i took whatever money i had leftover and started investing.
CVS made tens of billions in revenue. Where is all that money going?
They use it to buy up all the competition
1 out of every 13 Americans is a millionaire. Take children out of that equation, and 1 out of every 10 American adults is a millionaire.
To enrich all the shareholders.
@AMcGrath82 The C-suite primarily but also the PBMs (middlemen, also owned by CVS), Board members (with no pharmacy education or care for patients) and/ or shareholders that buy and sells shares on the stockmarket. Welcome to corporate america.
its publicly traded. that means the money goes to investors.
Former employee here. CVS killed my coworker and disabled me for over 10 years now... My pharmacy manager IGNORED my doctor's note and mads me disobey... which disabled me for life.... and omg the horrors and law breaking I saw all the time....
I'm so sorry., 💛🫂 thank you for sharing and speaking up. Your voice is very valuable.
Damn that’s fucked up. I’m so sorry. We’re all so fucked under this current system. 😞
Pharmacists do not take the hippocratic oath to do no harm.
Can you sue?
We have 4 CVS’s in a ~5 mile radius. One of the ones in a Target moved the pharmacist to a free standing location ~2 miles away. So there is no pharmacist actually on-site. Sometime they re-route controlled medications to a location with the pharmacist on-site and they don’t even notify patients or providers. Other times, they have to video chat w/ a remote pharmacist before being dispensing it. There are so many opportunities for error and delayed care w/ this model.
Everything will get worse. No longer the individual pharmacy. Corporate profits come first.
Thank you for covering this, ive seen US pharmacy staff crying out to be noticed for a couple years now and i cant imagine how much worse it can get from here.
When we're placing the lives of vulnerable people in our hands, we must not allow corporations to make us compromise on patient safety.
It's been like this for the past 15 yrs. Techs are severely underpaid for the work they do, and the pharmacists workload is ridiculous.
My hours were cut..... I used to work 35 to 40hrs a week now 😢 is cut to 25hrs. CVS WAS SUED IN THE PAST smh 🤦♂️ IT'S GETTING WORSE.
Well damn, this explains a hell of a lot. My local CVS pharmacist refused to fill an essential, and I MEAN ESSENTIAL medication, for over a month. I'm lucky to be breathing. The pharmacist refused to fill my prescription for an entire month, repeatedly insisting my doctor had failed to submit a correct and complete prescription order. So, a big shout out to CVS Corporate, for literally, nearly fucking killing me. I am really hoping for a class action lawsuit here and I will be the first in line to join. I have every text message, recorded all of my phone calls with the pharmacist, and I'm certain my physician would be happy to provide a copy of the complaint he filed with the state board of pharmacy after he personally called the pharmacist demanding to know why she refused to fill the prescription that they - CVS and the pharmacist - had filled, without question, every single month, for over three years.
Condolencias on your situation but you’d be surprised how many doctors don’t know what they need to include on a prescription for it to meet legal requirements. It’s not the pharmacists job to educate the provider on how to write a script though most things can be corrected with a phone call… that still relies on being able to get ahold of the providers staff and get an answer.
YES I've also gone weeks/months without medication due to ridiculous, random technical issues on CVS's end, which nobody had enough time to look into properly, let alone resolve. Even after several escalations (including an internal IT ticket filed by the head pharmacist), I ended up giving up & having my dr. send the prescription to a different pharmacy in the next town over. I _love_ having to drive past the CVS (which is a few blocks away from my house) & into a whole different town to get my medication every single month now just because CVS can't figure out how to actually provide the pharmaceutical services they claim to offer. /sarcasm Unfortunately, it's still preferable to the alternative. (Sitting around calling the pharmacy every day for weeks on end, on hold for at least an hour every time & often hung up on, while my symptoms continue to get worse because I'm not able to access the available treatment 😑)
You guys are scaring me. I'm currently on steroids for an inflammatory condition and I've been told it's a very bad idea to stop them suddenly. Both times I've had them filled (original, and one refill), it's been a days long process. It's been a few years since I've been on daily medication of any kind, and I've never experienced anything like this before.
I'm going to have to bring it up with the doctor.
@@catsrmylyf Ha! And to think, all this time, I actually thought it was just me. My prescription was finally filled, but only after my doctor personally called the offending pharmacist. Quite intrestingly, when I picked up, the pharmacist was MIA, as were all of the pharmacy techs I was familiar with. Folks wearing CVS badges around their necks who I'm guessing were corporate CVS trainers, were busy working new techs and assisting the new pharmacist. Not sure exactly what my doctor said, but it seems to have had a rather profound effect! BTW, love your username. I happily relate.
@ll1ll1ll1ll1ll1ll I believe the pharmacist was fired, and the prescription was promptly filled thereafter. No questions asked. My doctor isn't inept.
Pharmacies should be AT MINIMUM the same regard as the national postal service. The conflict of interest is too great.
@@timothyhoneycutt3895 It's pretty funny that no one believes you
@@canUfeelMYface i believe them.
@xandradice i bet you dew
@xandradice i bet you believe a lot of crap
Oh, you mean the one they're trying to privatize?
I am a pharmacist. I can relate to what these colleges are going through. As a professional though, I would rather be unemployed than work in such conditions.
We need to support them to get out, the same as the obstetricians and gynaecologists. While their country won't let them do their job and care for their patients conscientiously, the best thing is to help them move to a country that will.
People have bills and families
@@luvroo11 That's why pharmacists that don't want to work in conditions where they're likely to end up killing someone, go and find a different job to do.
We need to help more of them move out of the US. Like the obstetricians and gynaecologists, their skills are well in demand in the rest of the world and we will treat them with respect as valued health care professionals.
That is called a Monopoly and a Conflict of Interest.
Smells like BVS (Blackrock, Vanguard, StateStreet)
Yes, Blackrock owns more than 100 million shares of CVS stock
@@joechung9388Damn!
Yep. You nailed it
Bingo.
I worked at a startup that mined data from the PBM's and that data was used to estimate automobile insurance because there are complex mathematical formulas that can estimate likelihood of an accident based on prescriptions. Supposedly the customer has to give permission, but c'mon.
Yup, by signing their notice of privacy practices, you are unknowingly agreeing to garbage like this.
We must socialize big pharma. People over profits.
I hope Mark Cuban makes a difference
@@pj4246 lol Fox in the Hen house
CVS isn’t big pharma. Did you watch the video? CVS owns the pharmacy, the PBM, and the insurance company.
If anything they’ve got big pharma over a barrel.
Business needs to pay their way to play…I can’t speak to their profits, but if you operate on a negative then the pharmacists are lucky to have a job and income, from the company.
@@Anonsense-w5g No they don't. Their profits are a fixed % of their costs. The more big pharma charges them, the more profit they make. And the costs get rolled right into next year's premium increase. Look at the explosion of drugs that cost thousands (or tens of thousands) per month, and the rapid increase in insurance premiums over the past few years.
When the punishment is extremely low or nonexisting for crime, this is the world we live in
I was a pharmacist at cvs for a year and couldn’t take it anymore. Now work for an independent that is struggling with reimbursement under cost for some drugs. On drugs that would be profitable the insurance will saying something like “this drug has to be filled as a 90 day supply but you’re not a 90 day in network pharmacy” so they can’t fill with us. (The 90 day in network pharmacy is completely arbitrary they just set it that way so they can stiff us) patients love using us and ask if they can use goodrx instead but if we do that we’ll go out of business even faster because goodrx actually charges the pharmacy a fee claiming that they’re the only reason a patient filled with us so they get essentially a finders fee. The discounted price can be below cost and is made even lower with the fee
I did not realize GoodRx did that. *sigh*
Yeah, I'm a tech and just changed jobs from a large grocery chain to a small independent. I prefer the staffing level and the culture at my new job, but I am honestly not sure if I'll even have this job much longer, because of the difficulties I'm hearing we have. And to top it off, its cheaper for me to pay cash for MY meds than go through the PBM!
I have Aetna/CVS insurance and they are endlessly frustrating w/ all Rx. That 90 day supply issue has nearly fukt me over but I refuse to go to CVS if at all possible.
Ah yes, the maintenance choice trap.
Obstetricians and Gynaecologists are already leaving the US in droves. Time for pharmacists to follow suit. There are plenty of other countries who will treat you with respect and dignity and allow you to do your job properly.
We are understaffed. No only the pharmacy but the front as well.
I miss our local small pharmacy so much. They got bought up by Walgreens. The pharmacists used to know me by sight and we were on a first name basis. They did whatever they could to make sure I didn't miss a dose of medication if something for some reason was going wrong with getting it filled.
Now I have no idea who is handing me my medications (almost never the same people either) and sometimes it takes weeks for them to solve insurance or supply issues, making me miss my medications for all that time.
Mine burned down last week after 40+ years of service. I'm crushed
This directly affects me in multiple ways. My local pharmacy had to tell me to go somewhere else because insurance wouldn't pay enough for the meds I need. Guess where I ended up being forced to go, instead? More than that, the CVS I got sent to isn't even able to get me the meds I need on a consistent basis. Heck, I had a new med prescribed to me that I haven't even had yet, even thought he scrip was submitted weeks ago "It's on back order". It's insane. I WANT to go back to my old pharmacy, but they explained that if I used them without insurance, I'd be paying thousands per month. I don't even have the _option_ of supporting my local business, even though I want to. It's a gut punch. I don't get to shop local anymore, not because prices are cheaper at some stupid box store, but because the competition rigged it in their favor.
I'm surprised the workers don't go on a "no ticket" strike - if there aren't enough employees to do all the tasks, just tell all those people waiting in line that they can go home with their medicine without paying. Hit those share-holders where it hurts.
Probably illegal, but so were normal strikes once, and so are rent strikes.
That would be on a whole different level. That's hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of conversion. Prison.
If it were me, I think I'd be sending videos and extensive information to enforecment agencies. Maybe even redacted videos to the press. I might hand out business cards for mail-order pharmacies that follow procedures.
@@yesitschellewe need a solution for people whose prescription coverage must be fulfilled through CVS mail order.
Also medication from EUROPE should be allowed to be imported into America. Force Cvs to compete with international countries for the same medications.
@MaoRatto Absolutely. We need to allow medication imports from any country with sufficient standards. Incidentally, the same goes for infant formula.
@@yesitschelle From any country? No? China must get excluded due to, I do not want Temu sellers being able to say " hey you can get this " while even worse enslaved people are being paid in peanuts. Also keep placebos off of the market. By making the usa compete with other European countries. It would put pressure without too much fraud.
CVS likely owns your insurance company. Can you say insider trading, racketeering, price.fixing.
Pharmacies also invest in food conglomerates, or perhaps it’s the reverse. These companies know that the processed garbage Americans eat is making them sick, and they will be good pharmacy customers. The drug companies are always looking to create a new blockbuster drug that people will need to take on a daily basis for life. They want customers. They are busy spending taxpayer money to develop solutions in search of a problem, rather than developing drugs to help people who are suffering with very serious diseases, just because there aren’t millions and billions of people with that disease.
thank you for this video-my local CVS pharmacy just closed despite being in an active, high traffic location that served hundreds if not thousands of patients and customers. the pharmacist had little explanation for the closure other than “corporate decisions.” they pushed my prescription refills to another CVS further down the road that i hate going to due to the aforementioned understaffing and general chaos. this is truly eye opening. capitalism and corporate greed really is going to kill us all
I went to get an emergency script because we left our dogs Prednisolone at home when we were on vacation. A 60 day supply costs us around $30 from our vet, but CVS wanted to charge me over $150 for a ten day supply. Thankfully we only needed one days worth, but that should be illegal. I won't ever go to CVS ever again if I can avoid it.
CVS should go out of business 🧑💼
@@PraveenSrJ01 First we have to have a business that will take its place.
Next time, ask about goodrx
You forgetting the medicine at home should be considered negligence and animal abuse.
@@opinionated4219 all pharmaceutical companies in the USA 🇺🇸 need to shut down and big pharma needs to go out of business 🧑💼 forever
I swear I’ve walked into CVS and I didn’t see a single staff member.
There are three CVS stores/pharmacies within two miles of my home in the suburbs of Indianapolis, Indiana. They don’t seem to have the problems this video is describing. The products aren’t locked up, the aisles aren’t full of boxes, and there are several employees at each store. I don’t know why they are doing better than the stores in this video, but I’m glad the employees and pharmacists aren’t being treated badly.
Same here in the Philly suburbs. We have many, many CVS locations around here, and I've never been in one that looked like the one in the video. Nothing's locked up, no crates in the aisles, and there are plenty of customers. They are criminally understaffed, though. I hate when I go in and there's only one person in the pharmacy. That's extremely stressful, and you know what stressed out people do? Make mistakes. Except these ones can be fatal.
This is true of all the ones I've been to in new england. There is one in a kinda depressed area that has stuff locked up. Odd stuff too, like toothpaste, even though the expensive makeup isn't.
Depends how bad the theft rate is in your area, seems like you live in a nice area, but give it time, 1 or 2 of those cvs will not be there in the near future.
It’s almost like the real problem is the economic pressure of the local area in relationship to shoplifting, and the pharmacy argument is just a red herring to avoid the real issue of not enforcing shoplifting laws
I was in Indianapolis for 15 weeks in 2023. Yes, the inner city locations do have these problems. I used the location on Meridian Road and it was terrible. The drive-thru even had a hand written paper sign hanging stating 45 minute wait per car at the window.
This is why I go to small or specialty pharmacies in my area. Never any problem with my prescription. And they deliver for free! You can do that too!
Did you not watch the same video? The writing is on the wall for these smaller places.
too bad cvs killed mine
Ours have all closed 😢
I still have one, but I can tell they're struggling. Suggest people look into mail order instead. Even with Medicaid, I've found online pharmacies that would mail prescriptions.
@@VaporheadATC I'm staying at the local one as long as they stay open. And I'll do what I can to help.
This is so alien and bizarre to me.. I live in Canada in a major city.. I can't remember the last time there were maybe more than 2 or 3 people ahead of me in line to see the pharmacist, just a few minutes wait at most usually. We certainly don't have things like deoderant (or anything for that matter) etc locked up.. everything's just on shelves, you pick it up and take it to the cashier... why would you cripple productivity having to get a clerk to fetch a $5 item? Is theft so rampant in America?
Is CVS the only pharmacy in the US? Here our biggest is Shopper's Drugmart... but there's also at least 2 other fairly large competitors around (not as prolific though) and many many small, independent pharmacies as well. America is a very weird place.
America. Corporations and Billionaires.
No every grocery store has a pharmacy CVS is like Walmart for corner stores of course it's going to suck its basically a gas station withe meds instead of gas. I live in a small town and we have probably 20 or more pharmacy's for a small population. Mostly small locally ran pharmacy's that know your name and face when you walk in. This is another big city issue.
Urban areas have products locked up. Less so in the rural areas.
Yes, it is. Widespread megalopolist mindset is to blame, not the end consumer theft. I could have misread the title of this video as 'Home Goods', or a dozen other companies. They are all doing this type of financial oppression on an inescapable level. This country is still under slavery and people are MEANT to go hungry, as a market motivator.
CVS is not the only pharmacy retailer. Walgreens, Walmart , Publix grocery, plus independent pharmacies are in my area. This will vary by region.
I’m a pharmacist for Walgreens and CVS is the one place I’d never consider working. Imagine going to college for 8 years, getting a doctorate degree, and end up working in a glorified sweatshop.
I stopped going to CVS a couple years ago because they were so hopelessly understaffed and could never get any of my prescriptions filled. Switched to the little pharmacy inside my local grocery chain and couldn't be happier. Service is great and fast, and they always answer the phone if I have any questions. I hadn't even considered the safety aspect of an understaffed pharmacy at the time.
I’m also happy to be using a local pharmacy too after having dealt with Walgreens crappy service for years.
I suspect (my local?) CVS of using caller ID.
I HATE CVS and avoid it like the plague.
That'a a severe case of over-capitalism!
over-capitalism is the goal of capitalism, not a flaw, it's the point.
@@ohiasdxfcghbljokasdjhnfvaw4ehr EXACTLY!
Capitalism without competition isn't capitalism. It's called exploitation.
@@toddmason8403 nope, it's still just capitalism.
@@toddmason8403capitalism is solely based on exploitation
As an American ex-pat living in Spain, I can assure you it doesn't have to be this way!
CVS receipts are so long, you could knit a scarf or draft a screenplay on one. Maybe that’s the real reason they’re ‘getting worse’-running out of paper!