Indeed, if they had a pharmacy counter, where one could get prescription medicine, they would be pretty close to the American pharmacies. I never thought about that...
I think the reason why they don't is that pharmacies are pretty strictly regulated in Germany. They must be directly owned and supervised by a licensed pharmacist, and a single pharmacist may only own a small number of them (something like 3 or 4, a small number so he actually has a chance of supervising them personally). This prevents "chain pharmacies" from operating here, but it's probably also a huge hurdle when it comes to chain-style drugstores wanting to operate a pharmacy section - I guess the entire drugstore would either have to be owned by a pharmacist in that case, or the pharmacy would have to be operated as a separate entity (with a separate checkout process) inside of the same building, which is something that is pretty frequently seen in German shopping malls or those mall-like sections in front of big grocery superstores where smaller merchants can rent shop space.
I think the reason why they don't is that pharmacies are pretty strictly regulated in Germany. They must be directly owned and supervised by a licensed pharmacist, and a single pharmacist may only own a small number of them (something like 3 or 4, a small number so he actually has a chance of supervising them personally). This prevents "chain pharmacies" from operating here, but it's probably also a huge hurdle when it comes to chain-style drugstores wanting to operate a pharmacy section - I guess the entire drugstore would either have to be owned by a pharmacist in that case, or the pharmacy would have to be operated as a separate entity (with a separate checkout process) inside of the same building, which is something that is pretty frequently seen in German shopping malls or those mall-like sections in front of big grocery superstores where smaller merchants can rent shop space.