Pharmacy retailers have a relationship with the healthcare-reform law more complicated than most individuals and businesses.

We didn’t include this story in this week’s edition of the Fix because we thought SXC and Catalyst picked a really cool name (it’s OK), or even because we think CEO Mark Thierer is one of the brightest executives in the business (he is). It’s because Catamaran is a company to watch.

The House of Representatives' vote to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has drawn praise from the National Retail Federation.

After it was first identified as the cause of AIDS in 1983, being diagnosed with an HIV infection was a literal death sentence, and it remains that way for many people in poor countries who lack access to the life-saving medications that have transformed HIV from a sure ticket to death into a chronic illness.

Narrow networks. They're all the rage.

All drugs provided to HIV and AIDS patients under the District of Columbia's AIDS Drug Assistance Program will go through a new pharmacy network that includes Walgreens, the D.C. Department of Health said.

Retail pharmacies have been offering testing for diseases ranging from high cholesterol to cancer for years, but offering HIV testing presents a whole new realm of possibilities and challenges.

The Supreme Court's decision last week to maintain the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act doesn't mean much. Not really.

Smartphones will continue to influence retail sales and will grow to represent 19% of total store sales by 2016, according to new Deloitte research.

You want Rite Aid to win. A Rite Aid win represents a proof of concept — that concept being the creation of an effective market-driven loyalty program that incorporates savings on the healthcare services that actually works and in fact cross-pollinates pharmacy patients and front-end shoppers; that concept being that generic waves need not wash out all pharmacy sales volume if a pharmacy retailer can successfully grow ancillary healthcare services, such as immunizations or Rite Aid's new Rite Care Prescription Advisor; that concept being that there is in fact a return on investment from placing a knowledgeable team member armed with a tablet of health information physically in the aisles to proactively engage patients.

As much as CVS created a category of one for itself with its vertically integrated retail pharmacy-pharmacy benefit manager-clinic model, Walgreens has cast itself in a category of its own: A pharmacy-driven, global health-and-wellness company with the purchasing strength of more than 11,000 stores.