WHY CAN'T COSTCO RUN OUR HEALTH SYSTEM?

I have one regular medication I have to take, not a biggie, and something available in generic. I had always gotten it from our friendly neighborhood pharmacy where the pharmacist knows all his patients and they deliver for free if you need them to. And I paid my co-pay of $12 every month.

But then my health insurance decided I had to use their mail-order pharmacy instead. I didn't make the changeover when I should have, and ended up paying for one month's worth of prescription out of my own pocket. It cost $46 (this is about a year or two ago).

The mail-order pharmacy worked quite well, delivering my drugs right on schedule and deducting my $12 co-pay from a credit card every month.

But then circumstances changed such that my prescription wasn't going to be covered by insurance anymore. Uh-oh, I thought. A jump from $12 a month to $46 a month. Not that much out of pocket, but still.

So I made an easy phone call to the Costco pharmacy to ask how to transfer my prescription. They took down some info and took care of it all, nice and easy. Almost as nice as dealing with the friendly neighborhood pharmacy, almost as easy as dealing with the mail-order folks.

And I went in to pick up my prescription this weekend, without a clue as to what I'd be paying. And the total bill came to $7.50.

Hello? My out-of-pocket prescription came to less than my co-pay?

I was shocked. (Pleasantly shocked. But still.) It made me start asking questions. How much was the drug company making from my insurance company anyway? How much of the $46 I paid at the local pharmacy went to the friendly folks there, if it was only costing them $7.50 for the actual drug, and how much went to the insurance company, and how much went to the drug company?

And why can't Costco just run the whole thing and cut out all the middlemen?