CVS, Walgreens and Walmart – the nation’s three largest retail U.S. pharmacies have agreed to pay … [+] $12 billion in a massive global settlement to resolve claims they contributed to the opioid epidemic, according to media reports Nov. 1, 2022. This Aug. 29, 2018, photo shows an arrangement of prescription Oxycodone pills. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
CVS, Walgreens and Walmart – the nation’s three largest retail U.S. pharmacy chains — have agreed “in principle” to pay $12 billion in a massive global settlement to resolve claims they contributed to the opioid epidemic.
Bloomberg News was the first major news outlet to report Tuesday night that CVS Health, Walgreens Boots Alliance and Walmart have “tentatively agreed to pay more than $12 billion to resolve thousands of state and local government lawsuits accusing the chains of mishandling opioid painkillers.” Bloomberg cited “people familiar with the matter” as its sources on the settlement.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates the nationwide opioid crisis has led to more than a half million deaths from overdose in the last 20 years. Walmart, CVS and Walgreens combined have more than 23,000 U.S. pharmacies.
None of the U.S. drugstore chains reached Tuesday night agreed to comment on the reports or a proposed settlement. CVS is scheduled to report its third quarter earnings on Wednesday when more details of its share of the potential settlement could be disclosed.
According to reports and sources close to the companies, CVS is expected to pay $5 billion, Walgreens about $4 billion and Walmart will pay $3 billion. The settlement still has to be agreed to by the states, counties and other government entities involved in the discussions and who stand to reap the payouts.
But none of the retail pharmacy chains are admitting to wrongdoing, according to sources close to the company and media reports Tuesday night.
Investigations by state and federal attorneys as well as lawyers in private practices representing families of opioid victims have cited the role of distributors and pharmacies in the epidemic. A 2019 investigative report in the Washington Post said Walgreens “handled nearly one in five of the most addictive opioids” at the peak of the crisis surrounding the painkiller and acted as its “own distributor.”
Earlier this month, Google Cloud announced its latest venture within the realm of healthcare: a new Medical Imaging Suite. This initiative builds on years of hard work by the Google Cloud team, aimed at creating a universally friendly, efficient, and value-providing platform, with an ode to interoperability and accessibility.
The applications behind the platform are multi-fold:
Imaging Storage: the Suite will enable a more comprehensive way to store and access advanced medical imaging
Imaging Lab: in partnership with chip maker NVIDIA, the platform will make it easier to automate routine imaging tasks (e.g. labeling)
Imaging Datasets & Dashboards: the software will utilize advanced search tools to retrieve and view large sums of data
Imaging AI Pipelines: the Suite is built to support artificial intelligence capabilities in order to integrate machine learning systems and models
Imaging Deployment: the platform will provide a comprehensive and secure tool that can be curated to each organization’s needs
Thomas Kurian, Chief Executive Officer of Google Cloud, has previously explained his overarching vision with the product line: “Our customers and partners put their trust in our team to deliver next-generation cloud technologies to help them become the best tech company in their industry. The combination of Google’s technical strengths, backed by its unique scale and deep experience in connecting that technology with consumer products and ecosystems, enables Google Cloud to put the tools of tomorrow in the hands of organizations today.”
Established healthcare players are already using the software. Hackensack Meridian Health in New Jersey, for example, hopes to use the robust Suite for prostate cancer detection.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – MAY 28: Sundar Pichai, Alphabet CEO.
Getty Images
Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud.
South China Morning Post via Getty Images
But AI integration and tackling data problems in healthcare are not easy tasks. Many scholars have recently expressed criticism that the so called “digital revolution” in healthcare that was especially spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic has not delivered on the lofty promises that were made; instead, healthcare technology has been difficult to integrate in a meaningful way, especially in ways that can actually impact patient care outcomes.
Much of the challenge with AI specifically is the need for large volumes of data to create learning sets, so as to actually “teach” the AI system how to interpret data. For many organizations, their data remains disorganized, inaccessible, or in legacy formats that simply require a significant amount of “clean up” and reconciliation before they can be used in a meaningful way.
The purpose of solutions like Google Cloud is to eventually make data interoperable and machine learning ready, so that organizations can progress away from the previous age of information technology. Whether or not healthcare pundits like it, healthcare is amidst a revolution, one that will seamlessly integrate new and advanced technologies into patient care. Now, it is upto new and established technology leaders to create this revolution in a meaningful and safe manner.
will spur debate about whether the consolidation will raise food prices, or lower them.
The Biden administration’s antitrust regulators are scrutinizing mergers more closely than did predecessors, and an old argument against combinations is that they lead to price-gouging.
Run and HYDE! A Nightmare Is Storming into Walmart. HYDE® Nightmare is expanding its reach even further.
Press Release –
Aug 16, 2022
FRISCO, Texas, August 16, 2022 (Newswire.com)
– ProSupps, a leader in sports nutrition, has announced that UFC Welterweight Champion and partner Kamaru “Nigerian Nightmare” Usman will be launching his new product HYDE® Nightmare into Walmart stores nationwide. The announcement was made official on Aug. 15, 2022, Frisco, Texas.
HYDE® Nightmare prides itself on three key benefits: high performance, laser-sharp focus, and fierce energy. All are done with the ultimate goal to conquer physical and mental stress for any athlete, ranging from moderate bodybuilders to established combat athletes. Coming in Jawbreaker, Blood Berry, and Lightning Lemon flavors, this powder contains 300 mg of caffeine, is third-party banned substance tested, and greatly elevates exercise performance.
“It’s a really unique opportunity to bring advanced performance supplements to the sports nutrition aisle of the biggest retailer in the country – Walmart,” said Priscila Prunella, ProSupps VP of Marketing. “We at ProSupps are committed to educating the Walmart consumer and elevating their supplement section with HYDE® Nightmare.”
The pre-workout product has garnered a wide number of 5-star reviews, with many stating how it builds focus and how it pushes them into the mindset that they can keep going. Unlike other pre-workout supplements, you also don’t have to worry about it leaving a bad taste in your mouth or not getting the pump that you want – and deserve. Equipped with the hardware to push past your limits, HYDE® Nightmare is dead set on helping you win the “war of nutrition.”
“We put a lot of work into developing and launching a product that has full transparency, is completely clean, and gets the job done,” Kamaru Usman explained. “For the past 12 months, we’ve been grinding it out, expanding HYDE® Nightmare’s distribution across the world. I am humbled and excited to be launching my pre-workout into Walmart on its one-year anniversary.”
On UFC 278, the pound-for-pound best fighter in the world is scheduled to defend his UFC Welterweight Championship on Aug. 20, 2022, against “Rocky” Leon Edwards in a rematch in Salt Lake City, Utah at the Vivint Arena. The last time these two squared off was on Dec. 19, 2015, a unanimous victory for Usman.
At ProSupps, we strive to create performance products of superior quality, for those who take their training seriously and push their body to the limit. Our sports expert product development team works on the cutting edge, formulating the most advanced performance products available. Headquartered in Frisco, Texas, ProSupps products are sold in key retailers such as GNC, Walmart, Vitamin Shoppe, and Kroger, among others. For further communication, please visit www.prosupps.com or contact Priscila Prunella, VP of Marketing at pri@prosupps.com.
As the US attempts to wean itself off its heavy reliance on fossil fuels and shift to cleaner energy sources, many experts are eyeing a promising solution: your neighborhood big-box stores and shopping malls.
The rooftops and parking lot space available at retail giants like Walmart, Target and Costco is massive. And these largely empty spaces are being touted as untapped potential for solar power that could help the US reduce its dependency on foreign energy, slash planet-warming emissions and save companies millions of dollars in the process.
At the IKEA store in Baltimore, installing solar panels on the roof and over the store’s parking lot cut the amount of energy it needed to purchase by 84%, slashing its costs by 57% from September to December of 2020, according to the company. (The panels also provide some beneficial shade to keep customers’ cars cool on hot, sunny days.)
As of February 2021, IKEA had 54 solar arrays installed across 90% of its US locations.
Big-box stores and shopping centers have enough roof space to produce half of their annual electricity needs from solar, according to a report from nonprofit Environment America and research firm Frontier Group.
Leveraging the full rooftop solar potential of these superstores would generate enough electricity to power nearly 8 million average homes, the report concluded, and would cut the same amount of planet-warming emissions as pulling 11.3 million gas-powered cars off the road.
The average Walmart store, for example, has 180,000 square feet of rooftop, according to the report. That’s roughly the size of three football fields and enough space to support solar energy that could power the equivalent of 200 homes, the report said.
“Every rooftop in America that isn’t producing solar energy is a rooftop wasted as we work to break our dependence on fossil fuels and the geopolitical conflicts that come with them,” Johanna Neumann, senior director for Environment America’s campaign for 100% Renewable, told CNN. “Now is the time to lean into local renewable energy production, and there’s no better place than the roofs of America’s big-box superstores.”
Advocates involved in clean energy worker-training programs tell CNN that a solar revolution in big-box retail would also be a significant windfall for local communities, spurring economic growth while tackling the climate crisis, which has inflicted disproportionate harm on marginalized communities.
Yet only a fraction of big-box stores in the US have solar on their rooftops or solar canopies in parking lots, the report’s authors told CNN.
CNN reached out to five of the top US retailers — Walmart, Kroger, Home Depot, Costco and Target — to ask: Why not invest in more rooftop solar?
Many renewable energy experts point to solar as a relatively simple solution to cut down on costs and help rein in fossil fuel emissions, but the companies point to several roadblocks — regulations, labor costs and structural integrity of the rooftops themselves — that are preventing more widespread adoption.
The need for these kinds of clean energy initiatives is becoming “unquestionably urgent” as the climate crisis accelerates, said Edwin Cowen, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell University.
“We are behind the eight ball, to put it mildly,” Cowen told CNN. “I would have loved to see policy help incentivize rooftop solar 15 years ago instead of five years ago in the commercial space. There’s still a tremendous amount of work to do.”
Neumann said Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, possesses by far the largest solar potential. Walmart has around 5,000 stores in the US and more than 783 million square feet of rooftop space — an area larger than Manhattan — and more than 8,974 gigawatt hours of annual rooftop solar potential, according to the report.
It’s enough electricity to power more than 842,000 homes, the report said.
Walmart spokesperson Mariel Messier told CNN the company is involved in renewable energy projects around the world, but many of them are not rooftop solar installations. The company has reported having completed on- and off-site wind and solar projects or had others under development with a capacity to produce more than 2.3 gigawatts of renewable energy.
Neumann said Environment America has met with Walmart a few times, urging the retailer to commit to installing solar panels on roofs and in parking lots. The company has said it’s aiming to source 100% of its energy through renewable projects by 2035.
“Of all the retailers in America, Walmart stands to make the biggest impact if they put rooftop solar on all of their stores,” Neumann told CNN. “And for us, this report just underscores just how much of an impact they could make if they make that decision.”
According to Environment America, Walmart had installed almost 194 megawatts of solar capacity on its US facilities as of the end of the 2021 fiscal year and additional capacity in off-site solar farms. The company’s installations in California were expected to provide between 20% to 30% of each location’s electricity needs.
Target ranked No. 1 for on-site solar capacity in 2019, according to industry trade group Solar Energy Industries Association’s most recent report. It currently has 542 locations with rooftop solar — around a quarter of the company’s stores — a Target spokesperson told CNN. Rooftop solar generates enough energy to meet 15% to 40% of Target properties’ energy needs, the spokesperson said.
Richard Galanti, the chief financial officer at Costco, said the company has 121 stores with rooftop solar around the world, 95 of which are in the US.
Walmart, Target and Costco did not share with CNN what their biggest barriers are to adding rooftop or parking lot solar panels to more stores.
Approximate number of households companies could power with rooftop solar
Walmart — 842,700
Target — 259,900
Home Depot — 256,600
Kroger — 192,500
Costco — 87,500
Source: Environment America, Frontier Group report, “Solar on Superstores”
“My suspicion is that they want an even stronger business case for deviating from business-as-usual,” Neumann said. “Historically, all those roofs have done is cover their stores, and rethinking how [they] use their buildings and thinking of them as energy generators, not just protection from rain, requires a small change in their business model.”
Home Depot, which has around 2,300 stores, currently has 75 completed rooftop solar projects, 12 in construction and more than 30 planned for future development, said Craig D’Arcy, the company’s director of energy management. Solar power generates around half of these stores’ energy needs on average, he said.
Aging rooftops at stores are a “huge impediment” to solar installation, D’Arcy added. If a roof needs to be replaced in the next 15 to 20 years or sooner, it doesn’t make financial sense for Home Depot to add solar systems today, he said.
“We have a goal of implementing solar rooftop where the economics are attractive,” D’Arcy told CNN.
CNN also reached out to Kroger, which owns about 2,800 stores across the US. Kristal Howard, a Kroger spokesperson, said the company currently has 15 properties — stores, distribution centers and manufacturing plants — with solar installations. One of the “multiple factors affecting the viability of a solar installation” was the stores’ ability to support a solar installation on the roofs, Howard said.
Cowen, the engineering professor at Cornell, said solar is already attractive, but that labor costs, incentives and the different layers of regulation likely pose some financial challenges in solar installations.
“For them, this means usually hiring a local site firm that can do that installation that also knows local policy,” Cowen said. “It’s just another layer of complexity that I think is beginning to make sense because the costs have come down enough, but it needs kind of reopening that door of getting into an existing building.”
Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois, who co-chairs the power sector task force in the House, said the US has “failed to provide the incentives to people who have the expertise to go in and build these things.” The reason both retail companies and the power sector have not made much progress on solar is because “our system is so disjointed” and has a complex regulation structure, Casten said.
“Why aren’t we doing something that makes economic sense? The answer is this horribly disjointed federal policy where we massively subsidize fossil energy extraction, and we penalize clean energy production,” Casten told CNN. “For a long, long time, if you wanted to build a solar panel on the rooftop of Walmart, your biggest enemy was going to be your local utility because they didn’t want to lose the load.
“We could have done this decades ago,” Casten added. “And had we done it, we would not be in this dire position with the climate, but we’d also have a lot more money in our pocket.”
For Charles Callaway, director of organizing at the nonprofit group WE ACT for Environmental Justice, strengthening the rooftop solar capacity in big box retail stores is a no-brainer, especially if companies allow the local community to reap benefits either through installation jobs or sharing the electricity produced later.
Either way, it would put a massive dent in curbing the climate crisis and help usher in an equitable transition away from fossil fuels — and it’s doable, Callaway told CNN.
The New York City resident led a worker training program that helped train more than 100 local community members, mostly people of color, to become solar installers. He also formed a solar workers cooperative to ensure many of the participants of the training program get jobs in a tough market.
In the last two years, Callaway said his group has not only installed solar panels on roofs of affordable housing units, but also equipment capable of producing 2 megawatts of solar energy on shopping malls up in upstate New York. He emphasized that hiring locally would be most beneficial since local installers know the community and local regulations best.
“One of my huge concerns is social equity,” Cowen said. “Access to renewable energy is a fairly privileged position these days, and we’ve got to figure out ways to make that not true.”
Jasmine Graham, WE ACT’s energy justice policy manager, said the potential of building rooftop solar on big box superstores is encouraging, only “if these projects use local labor, if they are paying prevailing wages, and if this solar is being used in a manner such as community solar, which would allow [utility] bill discounts for folks that live in the same utility zone.”
Pressure is mounting for global leaders to act urgently on the climate crisis after a UN report in late February warned the window for action is rapidly closing.
Neumann believes the US can meet its energy demand with renewables. All it takes, she said, is the political will to make that switch, and the inclusion of the local community so no one gets left behind in the transition.
“The sooner we make that transition, the sooner we’ll have cleaner air, the sooner we’ll have a more protected environment and better health and the sooner we’ll have a more livable future for our kids,” Neumann said. “And even if that requires investment, it is an investment worth making.”
Dallas, Texas, December 15, 2016 (Newswire.com)
– The Law Store™, a U.S. law firm focused on innovating new concepts for access and delivery of legal services, has recently launched its new Texas brand, Hershewe and Humphreys, The Law Store™ in two new locations inside of Walmart this November: 7401Samuell Blvd. Dallas, TX 75228, and 150 North Interstate 35 East Service Road Lancaster, Texas.
The Dallas and Lancaster stores were open in time to offer deals on legal services by Black Friday including ‘buy one, get one free’ wills, reduced business service bundles, and reduced traffic ticket services. The two locations are offering $50 wills for area residents during the months of December and January.
“Our custom CRM platform allows clients to self-schedule online, manage documents, e-sign, pay online, and communicate with counsel – on their home computer or mobile device.”
Kurt Benecke, Chief Operating Officer
Hershewe & Humphreys, The Law Store offers fast, face-to-face legal services in convenient locations and Free First Advice™. Customers can stop in or schedule an appointment with an attorney at The Law Store to discuss client’s needs and to create a legal plan. The sites offer a variety of services including wills and estate planning, traffic tickets and DWI, family law, small businesses, personal injuries, elder law, real estate services, immigration, and bankruptcy.
The Law Store is set to open two additional locations in the Kansas City, Missouri area in February and another in Grand Prairie, Texas by March. The Law Store is currently recruiting qualified, enthusiastic employees and interns for all new locations.
“Connecting with Walmart, the world’s largest retail chain, to evolve our vision for the convenient delivery of legal service just made sense,” said Kurt Benecke, Chief Operating Officer. The Law Store unites on-site attorney guidance in a friendly location with state-of-the-art technology and affordability and menu-style pricing. “Our custom CRM platform allows clients to self-schedule online, manage documents, e-sign, pay online, and communicate with counsel – on their home computer or mobile device,” said Benecke. “With The Law Store’s model, you can begin the process online and complete it with an attorney in-store. You even have the option to meet with your attorney while on a grocery run and complete the process at home.”
Hershewe & Humphreys, The Law Store will maintain business hours from 10am to 8pm on weekdays and 10am to 6pm on weekends. To learn more about The Law Store, its concept, plans for expansion, or to set up an interview, please contact Michelle Hucke at michelle@thelawstore.com or visit the website at www.thelawstore.com.
