Rite Aid Expands Into Pharmacy Benefits Business

Drug store chains are changing their business models, adapting to big changes in health care. Rite Aid is expanding from running drugstores into managing pharmacy benefits with its $2 billion purchase of EnvisionRx. The company, which runs prescription drug plans for employers and insurers, also processes mail-order and retail pharmacy prescriptionss. EnvisionRx offers services in a growing area for prescription drug spending, specialty pharmacy, and a national Medicare prescription drug plan. Drug store rivals CVS and Walgreen are making similar moves, offering prescription and other health care services to consumers. With the rollout of Obamacare and Medicaid expansion in many states there is a growing market for health care at large drug stores.

The cable TV industry and broadcasters will be watching the receptio n to the newly launched Sling TV. The Dish Network online service costs $20 a month for ESPN, TNT, TBS, BBC America and some other cable channels. Dish has also added AMC to its lineup just in time for the new season of the network's most popular show, "The Walking Dead." "I think a lot of people in the industry are going to pay a lot of attention to this service," said Paul Sweeney, media analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. "Let's see how the demand is: are there a lot of consumers out there that will sign up for this?" Sweeney says if Sling is a hit, "then I think everybody is going to take a step back- the cable networks the cable distributors- and really re-think the relationships."

Oil and gas drilling company Halliburton says it will lay off as much as 8 percent of its workforce because of falling oil prices. That's about 6,000 employees. Crude prices have plunged nearly 60 percent since last June. In recent weeks they've been up slightly.

Target has agreed to pay nearly $4 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Northern California prosecutors saying that it charged higher prices than advertised. The retailer is said to have misrepresented the weights of products and failed to ensure that price scanners at checkout stands were accurate.

Apple has set a record on Wall Street . It's the first U.S. company to be worth more than $700 billion based on the value of its stock. That's almost twice the value of the next biggest company, oil giant ExxonMobil.

Finance ministers from euro nations are holding an emergency meeting in Brussels on Greece later today, the group's first opportunity to hear directly from the new left-wing anti-austerity Greek government. Greece wants to renegotiate the terms of its international bailout that has imposed years of punishing austerity on the country. The current agreement expires later this month. Speculation that Greece could be granted extra time to hold new negotiations gave a lift to the US stock market yesterday, with the S&P 500 rising more than 1 percent.