- China: Low US Interest Rates Threaten Recovery
- Hedge Fund Billionaire Paulson Reports New Citi Stake
- White House Plans to Freeze Spending to Cut Deficit
- Cramer: 5 Earnings Reports to Watch Next Week
- Court Rejects 'Clawbacks' for Alleged Stanford Victims
- Cities With the Most Home Price Reductions
- Tax Credit Sparking First-Time Home Sales: Realtors
- Investors Cut Back US Stocks for Bigger Growth Abroad
- This Year's Biggest Thanksgiving Leftover: Cash
- U.S. Stocks Rally for the Second Straight Week
- Dollar is Not Plunging—So 'Calm Down': Market Strategist
- Strategists Say Markets Have More Upside — But How Much?
- Hirschhorn: Risk-Averse Traders
- Roginsky: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Financial Reform
- This Year's Biggest Thanksgiving Leftover: Cash
- TV Series Inks Unique Deal For Fight
- First Time Buyers Rescue Housing: Realtors
- Dollar General Trades Higher After Its IPO
MOST SHARED
- CNBC Video: Warren Buffett & Bill Gates - Keeping American Great
- CNBC TRANSCRIPT: Warren Buffett & Bill Gates - Keeping America Great
- Has Twitter's Finest Hours (Seconds) Come and Gone?
- China's Role as Lender Alters Dynamics for United States
- Israel Going Green
- Microsoft's Bill Gates Praises Apple's Steve Jobs For 'Saving the Company'
Text Size 
As the Obama administration pushes for healthcare reform, Walgreen is on target to reduce costs by $1 billion in the next two years, company president and CEO Gregory Wasson said Thursday.
In addition to pushing for generic prescription drugs, Walgreen launched a prescription savings club card directed at people without healthcare coverage.
"As the administration provides healthcare to all Americans, we will still be able to promote generic drugs," Wasson said. "The sands are shifting in healthcare and I think that creates strategic opportunities for a lot of us."
Although Walgreen [WAG
Loading...
()
] is continuing to slowdown store growth by 2.5-3 percent through 2011, the company is hiking its dividend by 22 percent, Wasson said.
"We feel confident with our strategy," he said. "We felt the right thing to do was to reward our shareholders at this point."
This marks the 76th year of offering a dividend and 34th year of offering an increase, Wasson said.
More healthcare news on CNBC.com:
Print
Email
- Warren Buffett and Bill Gates spoke to Columbia students, and Buffett made the students a startling offer.
- For the chief of cable company Comcast, growth has been about making deals – generally very large deals.
- Some companies may start using insurance to shift carbon risk from their balance sheets to maybe... yours?
- The president and founder of Genesis Today wants to improve America’s health, and thinks Wal-Mart can help.
- Switzerland's privacy watchdog is taking legal action to force Google to make changes to its Street View service.
- A wealthy, distracted Texas driver crashed his million-dollar Bugatti Veyron sports car into a salt marsh, say police.
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes