NEW YORK — Wal-Mart plans to begin selling nearly 300 generic prescription drugs for a sharply reduced price, offering a big lure for bargain-seeking customers and presenting a challenge to competing pharmacy chains. The world’s biggest retailer said Thursday that it will test its sales program, in which 291 generic drugs will be sold at $4 for a month’s supply, in Florida. The drugs involved provide treatments for conditions ranging from allergies to high-blood pressure. Selling generic drugs at prices that don’t offer much if any margin for profit could serve two purposes for Wal-Mart: It could draw customers away from big pharmacy chains to Wal-Mart stores that offer a much wider array of products, and it could help Wal-Mart with an image problem stemming from its policies on health insurance for employees. ‘We’re able to do this by using one of our greatest strengths as a company - our business model and our ability to drive costs out of the system, and the model that passes those costs savings to our customers,’ Bill Simon, executive vice president of the company’s professional services division, said in announcing the plan at a Tampa, Fla., store. ‘In this case […]