Stop & Shop One-Ups Walmart With Free Generic Drug Offering

(MoneyWatch)  Stop & Shop has gone one better than Walmart's $4 prescription drug plan. It's offering generic antibiotics free of charge through July 11. The company says:

If your physician feels you need an antibiotic, just bring in your prescription and you can get up to a 14-day supply of select generic antibiotics free with your Stop & Shop Card.

Here's the list of drugs they offer. Note that you need a Stop & Shop card -- it's all about database marketing, people!

On the one hand, it's nice to see treatment being offered for free. On the other, it won't help the overprescription of antibiotics in this country, which is creating resistant superbugs.

Opinion: These low-cost/no-cost plans suggest a partial solution to America's healthcare crisis. Would it really be so difficult to require that all Americans purchase a cheap, basic healthcare insurance plan that offered a limited number of primary care doctor visits, prescription coverage for generics, and some preventive care? Spreading the premiums over the entire population would make access affordable and the care being offered -- preventive, non-emergency, non-surgical -- isn't too expensive to provide.

That baby step would be better than the current situation, where a single doctor visit can reach $100 for an uninsured person, even if the scrip is only $4. And it would create a building block from which a more elaborate universal healthcare service could grow.

Here's Walmart's current $4 drug list.

Hat-tip to JWT's Anxiety Index blog.