In Chile, a country where free enterprise is almost sacrosanct, a communist mayor is shaking up the system by inspiring local governments to jump into the drugstore business and offer cut-rate prices to a populace that’s grown weary of the big chain pharmacies.
Fifty-eight municipal governments have opened so-called “popular” drugstores in the past year and dozens more will follow suit in the next few months, according to the mayor, Daniel Jadue. Recoleta, the working-class neighborhood in Santiago that Jadue oversees, was the first to open one. Its discounts, reaching as high as 78 percent when compared with the medicines sold by pharmacies controlled by the likes of Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. and Fomento Economico Mexicano SAB, proved an immediate success. Even local councils in wealthy areas that typically frown on any state intervention now are adopting the model.
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