Pharmacies: pinnacle of US inefficiency

On Sunday I went to Walgreens. I currently take about 6 different prescription medications, and I needed several of them filled.

I dropped off my prescriptions (which I had previously got from my doctor), and told the guy at the cash register that I would "wait" (since I didn't want to drive back home, and back - big waste of fuel). The dude told me they would be ready in 15-20 minutes, so I perused the store like a loser, after 30 minutes they still had not called me to counter, and I went to check, and the pharmacist was still going through them, repackaging them, and putting all of these labels on. I spent a total of about 1 hour in the Walgreens getting my prescriptions filled. I don't really have a better way to spend an hour, especially on Sunday, but I know some people do.

Are all American pharmacies this backwards, or this a Walgreens thing?

I've gotten prescriptions in several third-world countries many times before. Usually the only person behind the counter is a girl, maybe 18 years old, who may or may not have finished high school, and who lives with her extended family in a cinder-block house, which may or may not have hot water, and takes the dilapidated city bus to work, and doesn't earn $10 in a day. You tell her the name of the drug you want (no prescription, and therefore, no doctor visit is needed, unless you're getting something like Morphine), and she pulls the box off the shelf and hands it to you in the original package from the manufacturer. She rings up the order, and you pay her. The whole transaction takes less than 2 minutes.

In the US you have to interact with about three people just to get medication. First, your doctor, who probably lives in a giant sprawling property in the hills and drives a Lamborghini to work. Second, the pharmacist, who probably lives in a giant McMansion, and drives her Hummer about twenty-miles round trip to the store, pays $300 to get her hair styled and highlighted every month, and yet still cannot correctly pronounce the names of half of the medications I take. Finally, the cashier, who probably lives in an expensive apartment complex, and drives his shiny new Civic Hybrid to work. And I didn't even mention the doctor's receptionist, nurse, the huge insurance bureaucracy behind the scenes, and so on. And people wonder why price of medical care in the US is skyrocketing?

What exactly does a pharmacist do? These people have some sort of advanced training, and earn around $150K a year, but as far as I can tell they do nothing but break up boxes of prescriptions from the factory and put labels on them, and repackage them. What a waste! As far as I'm concerned these people are completely useless and their job can be totally outsourced. How many tens of billions of dollars do Americans waste on pharmacists and the extravagant super-sized lifestyles they lead?

As for doctors, are they really needed for prescriptions? I am a grown man and don't really need a doctor to tell me whether I can get a certain medication or not, particularly for refills which I've been taking for years, and for medications with minimal to no risk of complications. I can buy cigarettes and alcohol without anybody's approval but I can't get eye drops unless my use of them is blessed by a medical professional? True, medication with potential for abuse should be controlled, but that does not justify the whole broken pharmacy system. For pretty much any prescription I take, Google tells me much more info about the medication than my doctor can.