Those also likely led to an advertisement revenue to help keep stores profitable.
While late stage capitalism is the source of most problems, it isn’t (primarily) the source of this one.
The issue is that healthcare in general is a hellscape. You are at the mercy of whatever tucker carlson and friends said this week. And pharmacists not only have to deal with the opiate problems but also get to add birth control, hormone therapy, and vaccines to that mix.
I was chatting with the one pharmacist at the local CVS a few weeks back when I got my boosters. It already took until an hour after my appointment until he had time to give me my two jabs. In that time he vaccinated three people, got screamed at by one person for “giving kids aids”, had to fix three forms that the counter attendant fucked up, had to get at least two people’s emergency medication, and deal with someone who was insisting that “I am a (f-slur) and cut my dick off five times last year. That is why I have these six different prescriptions and you are a racist if you ask to see my ID”.
He is pretty young so he still interacts with his university a lot. And nobody he knows is going into pharmacy. Because the pay is not that good and it is now the worst of all worlds. you get the customer facing hell of being a nurse coupled with the debt of being a “real” doctor.
Maybe they can get paid more (and they should). But it doesn’t impact the lack of supply. And considering how many people are bailing on “general” medicine as a whole in exchange for specialized fields and practices because of “The Culture War”? You need to pay a WHOLE lot more for that.