You may have noticed a change at the local Rite Aid pharmacy.
CVS Pharmacy has acquired two of our community’s Rite Aid stores as part of its aggressive takeover of 64 Rite Aid locations across Idaho, Oregon and Washington, amid Rite Aid’s second Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in May 2025.
Far from a benevolent rescue, this move by CVS Health Corporation reveals a calculated strategy to dominate the pharmacy market, cloaked in the guise of preserving local pharmacy access.
CVS’s logo, a bright red heart, promises care and compassion, but this warm facade masks a cold, profit-hungry corporation. While the heart suggests a commitment to community health, CVS’s Pharmacy Benefit Manager Caremark strong-arms local pharmacies with predatory, non-negotiable contracts that favor CVS’s bottom line.
CVS Health Corporation owns Caremark, its pharmacy benefit manager (PBM), creating a vertically integrated empire that tightly links the two entities in a profit-driven ecosystem. Caremark, operating as CVS Caremark, manages prescription drug benefits for insurers and employers, controlling reimbursement rates and contract terms for pharmacies, including CVS’s own stores and competitors like local independents or Rite Aid. This ownership allows CVS to leverage Caremark’s dominance — handling roughly a third of U.S. prescription payments—to favor its own pharmacies with higher reimbursements while imposing predatory, non-negotiable terms on others, systematically tilting the market to boost CVS’s profits, often at the expense of competition and patient access.
“It’s appalling,” said one pharmacist. “CVS Caremark set the fire that burned Rite Aid to the ground, and now they’re posing as firefighters to ‘rescue’ their customers.”
Rite Aid, once a pharmacy titan, was drowning in over $2 billion in debt, largely due to suffocating PBM practices. CVS Caremark played a pivotal role by setting reimbursement rates so low they often didn’t cover medication acquisition costs. “Caremark pays its own CVS pharmacies 10 to 12 times more than competitors like Rite Aid or our local pharmacy for the same prescriptions,” said one local pharmacy owner. CVS’s acquisition of Rite Aid isn’t a lifeline — it’s a power grab, absorbing customers and stores while sidestepping its role in Rite Aid’s collapse.
The impact hits closer to home than many realize. Across the street from many local independent pharmacies, sits a CVS store dictating what that small business earns through CVS Caremark’s PBM contracts. These agreements impose below-cost reimbursement rates, low dispensing fees, and hidden clauses like retroactive penalties, leaving local pharmacies with no leverage and dwindling profits.
This absurd conflict of interest — where a direct competitor controls a neighborhood pharmacy’s livelihood — threatens the survival of independent pharmacies nationwide. And patients will face the fallout: higher copays, fewer pharmacy options, and reduced access to critical medications.
Our community deserves better than a corporate fox guarding the pharmacy henhouse. CVS’s takeover of Rite Aid’s stores is a stark reminder of its role in dismantling competition while posing as a savior. Congressional efforts, like the PBM Reform Act of 2025 led by Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Georgia, aim to curb PBM abuses through transparency and fair pricing, but reform faces an uphill battle against CVS’s market grip.
Local pharmacists urge residents to support independent pharmacies and demand accountability. “This isn’t just about pharmacies — it’s about the American Dream being eroded by massive corporate greed,” said one local business owner.
To understand the full scope of CVS Caremark’s predatory tactics and their impact on local pharmacies, we urge readers to watch the eye-opening YouTube video “Modern Medical Mafia.” This hard-hitting exposé dives deep into how CVS Caremark, and other PBMs, manipulate the pharmacy marketplace and enforce exploitative contracts to cripple competitors like Rite Aid and independent pharmacies. This video lays bare the corporate greed behind CVS Caremark, and offers a compelling call to action for our community to demand transparency and support local pharmacies before they’re squeezed out entirely.
Will Quinby
Co-owner of Chehalis Pharmacy, Centralia Pharmacy and Tim’s Pharmacy
