Times sure have changed.  Nearly twenty years ago, the mayor of Boston and leaders of community health centers and hospitals were freaking out over CVS’s planned introduction of for-profit health clinics at its stores. For-profit health care! The horror!   … But today the for-profit CVS MinuteClinics and the non-profit MGB, the state’s largest health care provider, hope to join forces — with the former expanding into primary care and then referring patients to MGB’s regional provider network, as the Globe’s Jonathan Salzman reports. … Is this good for patients? I suppose so, on the surface, if it really provides health-care services where they’re needed. But I remember a time when CVS’s MinuteClinics were touted as a for-profit alternative – actual competition – to non-profit provider behemoths like MGB (formerly known as Partners) and a way to help control skyrocketing health costs while providing easy access to basic care. Now the two are allies? How does funneling patients to the most expensive care network in the state help reduce health costs? How does this help struggling community health centers and hospitals left behind in the underserved areas that CVS-MGB plan to target? …

Fyi: I’ve used CVS’s MinuteClincs a number of times in the past. Ditto WalMart’s mini-clinics. They’re handy, particularly for getting necessary vaccine shots. I’m glad they’re around. But count me a skeptic when two former health-care foes –- one a publicly traded corporation and the other a giant provider network viewed by some as semi-monopolistic -– band together and say it’s all about altruism.