Everyone's Watching the Elizabeth Holmes Movie. Arizona Patients Lived It.
Everyone's watching the Elizabeth Holmes movie. 175,940 Arizonans lived it.
A24's documentary You Can See Everything opened Oct. 16 to $15.6 million, according to Box Office Mojo. Variety called it the biggest documentary opening in more than 20 years. I'm a pharmacist, so the part of this story I keep thinking about isn't the founder. It's the people who walked into a drugstore and paid for a blood test.
Before It Was a Movie, It Was a Blood Draw
Starting in 2013, Theranos opened 40 Theranos Wellness Centers inside drugstores around Phoenix, according to the Arizona Republic. The paper called Arizona Theranos's main testing ground.
Here is what Arizona's 2017 consent decree with Theranos lays out. These numbers come from the state's allegations, and Theranos denied any unlawful conduct.
Arizona, 2013 to 2016 | Number |
Blood tests sold | About 1,545,339 |
Arizona consumers who bought them | About 175,940 |
Test results those tests produced | 7,862,146 |
Results voided or corrected | About 834,233 (10.6%) |
Consumer restitution Theranos agreed to | $4.65 million |
The decree was written to refund Arizona consumers everything they paid for Theranos testing. Theranos agreed to it without admitting liability.
The Drugstore Settlement
The customers also sued. The drugstore chain that hosted the Theranos centers agreed to pay $44 million into a settlement fund for the class, and the court gave final approval on Feb. 6, 2024, according to the settlement website. The chain denies all of the allegations, and the court never decided who was right.
Why a Pharmacist Cares
People walk up to a pharmacy counter because they trust it. They hand over a prescription or a sample, they pay, and they assume the thing behind the counter is what it says it is.
That trust is the job. And the easiest way to honor it is to stop hiding things. In most of health care, the price is one of the things you can't see until after you've paid. The film's title is a pretty good standard for all of us: you should be able to see everything, and that includes the price, before you pay.
Questions People Ask
What is You Can See Everything? It's an A24 documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos. It opened in U.S. theaters on Oct. 16, 2026.
Where did Theranos test people in Arizona? At 40 Theranos Wellness Centers inside drugstores around Phoenix, starting in 2013, according to the Arizona Republic.
Did Arizona customers get their money back? Arizona's 2017 consent decree was designed to give Arizona consumers full restitution of what they paid for Theranos testing. Theranos denied any unlawful conduct.
What happened to Elizabeth Holmes? Variety describes the film as her story before she began an 11-year prison sentence for defrauding investors.
See the Price Before You Pay
Forest Park Pharmacy doesn't take insurance, and every price is posted on our price checker before you ever transfer a prescription. Every drug is priced at our actual acquisition cost plus a transparent fee.
We have no reason to pretend the price is higher than it is. We compete on price.
Head to forestparkpharmacy.com to look at our price checker and transfer today to save. See ya.
