Local pharmacists see different outcomes from Wal-Mart's announcement Thursday of lower prices on some generic drugs. One sees little change for his store, while another expects to lose business to the retail giant when the program comes to Virginia.

Wal-Mart currently offers the program only in Tampa, Fla., but is expected to expand it to the rest of the country next year.

The world's largest retailer announced that it would begin selling about 300 generic drugs for $4 for a 30-day supply to anyone, regardless of whether they carried insurance.

The move initially was considered by analysts to be a potential blow to Wal-Mart competitors, including CVS, Target and Walgreens, and a boon to the uninsured. But Target has announced that it will match the pricing, and for small independent pharmacists the reality is much less clear.

"It sounds like a big deal at first, but it bottoms out," said Jim Roberts, owner of Williamson Road Pharmacy. That's because most of his customers have either private health insurance or Medicare, where the co-pay for generic drugs is low, or in some cases even zero.

"It may affect the uninsured without Medicare, but it will have little impact except for traffic building" at Wal-Mart and Target, he said.

Those uninsured may not want to party just yet.

First of all, there aren't many drugs involved. Wal-Mart's list of 291 medications only includes about 135 different products; the rest are varying dosages and formulations -- tablet or liquid, for example. Major pharmacies usually offer between 1,500 and 1,800 generic drugs.

Some of the medications on Wal-Mart's list are also available over the counter. A 600-mg dosage of ibuprofen is there, for example, but that is the equivalent of taking three Advil tablets.

Further, Wal-Mart's $4 pricing only covers five of the top 20 prescribed drugs in the U.S.: generic forms of Albuterol, Amoxicillin, Levothyroxine, Synthroid and Toprol. (And two, Synthroid and Levothyroxine, are essentially the same.)

Despite this, Bob Kennedy, owner of Sanco Drug in Southeast Roanoke, was somewhat concerned.

"I think it's significant," he said of the announcement. "I think I'll probably lose some customers" because he won't be able to match those prices for people without insurance, which he said make up a significant part of his business.

In order to accept insurance plans, pharmacies must accept the insurance company's prices, which often leave them with little or no profit. Many stores are able to make this up by charging higher prices to the uninsured, or -- in the case of larger retailers -- to use the low-priced drugs to lure in customers.

That's not a tactic that a small, independent pharmacy such as Kennedy's can use.

"Maybe we need to run the pharmacy as a loss leader and make it up on candy," he said sarcastically. "That's just stupid."

At least, stupid for the little guy. For Wal-Mart and CVS, he said, it works, although Kennedy questioned the ethics.

"It's like selling gas for a dollar a gallon," he said. "It reminds me of Japan a few years ago, when they were dumping steel here," he said. "It's a type of dumping. It's just another tactic of how you run people out of business."

Roberts, though, didn't have the same take. He thinks it's more about marketing on Wal-Mart's part than on making a real difference.

"The generics are so cheap anyhow, we can almost compete with them for four dollars," he said. "Heck, I could beat 'em on some." He gave the example of hydrochlorothiazide, a common blood-pressure medication usually referred to as HCTZ. "Thirty tablets cost less than a dollar," Roberts said. "So what are they [Wal-Mart] giving up? They're still making money on the cheapies."

On that, Kennedy agreed. "Wal-Mart," he said, "isn't giving anything away."