CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid have closed thousands of locations in the past three years — and the coverage has blamed shoplifting, remote work, and 'changing consumer habits.' But the real story is a reimbursement system so broken that pharmacies lose money on the prescriptions they fill, a middleman industry that almost no one has heard of, and what happens to a neighborhood's health when the last pharmacy on the block shuts down.