Jon Carroll reports a drug store horror story:

As you may not have heard, the CVS Caremark company, a nationwide drugstore chain, recently bought Longs drugs for about $2.6 billion, vaulting them over Walgreen as the largest drugstore chain in the country. Of particular interest to CVS, according to the Wall Street Journal, was the prescription services branch of Longs, which makes, in layman's terms, a whole truckload of money.

Not being a devotee of the retail sector, I was unaware of this acquisition until signs began popping up at my local Longs pharmacy. Longs is now CVS! Same great service, same great people, new name. Smiling face of a reliably ethnic - I live in Oakland, after all, where we like reliable ethnics - man or woman in a white coat with "Longs" written on the breast.

See, they're still Longs at heart. It's just that they're called something different and, oh yeah, some of them are going to be laid off. That's the part they don't talk about in the sign.

But, by golly, I looked behind the counter, and it was the same friendly people. It's just that there were fewer of them. Just two people, in fact: A pharmacist (white coat) and a clerk (blue coat). They were wrestling with an entirely new computer system which was, to use the jargon, crashing with some frequency. I know this because I was sitting in a plastic chair waiting for my prescription refill, so I had time to observe.

Usually, there are about five people working at the pharmacy at midday on Saturday, a traditionally busy time. I have no idea whether this staff downsizing had anything to do with layoffs; I merely report.

Now Wonks Anonymous gets his health care from one of those evil doctor/hospital/pharmacy health care providers that Mr Court and all of the antitrust lawyers are worried about. He would like to report that he has never waited more than an hour for a prescription and that only for a new prescription. As a matter of course he phones in his refills and gets the meds by mail.

Naturally this level of effectiveness and customer service would be a threat to hard working pharmacy monopolists everywhere and it might damage other hard working members of the health care industry.

The only problem with Wonks Anonymous provider, that would be Kaiser Permanente, is that it is the only one of its kind. It would do a lot better if it had some real competition. Sutter Health and its affiliated doctors might want to think about this.

That is, if Jamie Court and his friends don't stop them.