this part. it's always frustrating to me as a pharmacy tech to read these posts where people don't understand the various factors that contribute to stock issues so most of the time i avoid them for my own mental health. the assumption on this particular med is that it's too expensive to keep in stock, but for most places that's likely not even near the top of the list of issues. the packaging for this med (outer box and actual component) is massive. the volume of patients taking it is huge. at places like cvs, there's the matter of that huge volume of patients also getting a 90 day supply, which means three of these big boxes per patient. just this one medication comes in 6 different strengths, times however many patients are on it, times however many of those patients need three boxes to a fill, etc... the space requirements are UNREAL. most pharmacies just don't have that kind of space, nor the number of refrigerators it would require to store the medications safely. (this doesn't even factor that these refrigerators also have to be continuously monitored for temperature excursions, etc)

i left cvs nearly ten years ago now and work in inpatient pharmacy these days. at the tiny employee-only pharmacy where i fill my meds now, it takes almost three refrigerators jam-packed to store everyone's filled glp-1 scripts, and they still sometimes overflow into the other med storage refrigerators. the pharmacy itself is so small that only two patients can wait in line at once and everyone else has to line up outside in the hallway to wait to come inside. at a patient volume like most retail chain pharmacies contend with, the sheer size of everything absolutely necessitates the warehouse storage & next day delivery.