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While I like Walgreens, it certainly sounds like Walgreens is legally ripping off consumers in this case.

But in this case I think the problem is the shopper. When every you buy something that costs a lot of money you should check prices.

Corinne should have done some price checking before she shelled out the $200 to Walgreens. So in reality it's her own damn fault for getting ripped off.

When I was living in Phoenix and working in Los Angeles, I had the same problems with rental cars. They tweek their prices all the time. One company will charge an outrageous high rip off price one week while the next week they charge fantastic low prices.

Every time I renewed my rental contract I would check the prices of the competition. And several times, if I had not checked prices, I would have been gouged like Corinne was.

Of course some people say the solution is to have the government regulate everything.

Well that's not the solution, because the government usually screws people worse then the private sector.

You can buy legal, government approved medical marijuana at the rip off prices of $300+ an ounce. Or you can buy illegal black market marijuana at $50 to $100 an ounce, which is one sixth to one third of the price of the government approved legal marijuana.

Source

Roberts: Why does Walgreens charge 1,237 percent more than Costco?

Laurie Roberts , The Republic | azcentral.com 9:35 a.m. MST November 25, 2016

Walgreens is charging $198.80 out-of-pocket for a thirty-day supply of Donepezil - a medication used to treat Alzheimer's. The same medication at Costco costs $14.87. Why? We asked the companies.

Corinne was reeling when she left the doctor’s office and made a beeline to her neighborhood Walgreens.

Ken, her husband of 38 years, had just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She had watched, stunned and near tears, as he couldn’t answer a series of questions, couldn’t even tell the neurologist that it was fall.

A blow like that? It’s almost physical, like a freight train slamming into your gut as suddenly you realize that life will never again be the same.

“We left the office with a prescription for Donepezil,” she told me. “I dropped it off at Walgreens and came on home with our daughter and Ken. A couple of hours later, she and I went to pick it up. This was when I found the price to be $198.80. I was floored, but my overwhelming thought was ‘get that medicine into Ken ASAP.’”

She paid cash, as Ken is on Medicare but doesn’t have prescription drug coverage. A few days later, when some of the fog of emotion had lifted, Corinne started questioning how 30 tablets – a month’s supply -- could cost $198.80. So she started checking around.

And found the same medication at Costco for $14.87.

So I guess you’re wondering how Walgreens could charge $198.80 for pills that cost just $14.87 at Costco. How a reputable pharmacy could gouge its customers to the tune of 1,237 percent.

Corrine wondered as well. She wrote Walgreens but never got an explanation – just a call offering a full refund.

Why do they charge so much? It's a secret

Apparently, pricing strategy for prescription drugs is a state secret akin to the nation’s nuclear codes. Neither Costco nor Walgreens would discuss it with me.

“It’s important to note that more than 97 percent of our patients do not pay cash prices,’ Walgreens spokesman Scott Goldberg told me, via email. “They purchase their prescriptions using some form of prescription insurance coverage.”

So, reading between the lines, the people who have insurance get a break on the cost and the people who don’t … the ones who often can’t afford insurance … are gouged?

Apparently, it works like this. Most customers of the major chain drug stores have insurance and insurance companies negotiate prices that are discounted from a store’s list price. Therefore, the chains attach the list price to a rocket and launch it skyward – and to heck with the poor schlubs like Corrine, who pay out of pocket.

Which doesn’t explain why Costco’s prices remain earthbound. And mum’s the word over at Costco HQ:

“Costco Pharmacy prices pharmaceuticals based on the same philosophy that we apply to the other merchandise we sell in the warehouse which is - ‘To continually provide our members with quality goods and services at the lowest possible prices.’ However we typically do not share the details behind this philosophy or business model.”

The moral of this story: it’s worth shopping around for prescription drugs. Because that neighborhood drug store that bills itself as “at the corner of happy and healthy”?

Turns out it’s on a street called highway robbery.