I remember a scene in the 1964 film "Seven Days In May," when a senator,
played masterfully by Edmond O'Brien, exclaimed, "Right now, the government
of the United States is sitting on top of the Washington Monument, teetering
this way and that way." That is how I answer your question about pharmacy.
Which way this activity is going to go, I don't know.  Will pharmacists rise
above the description below, to become the "specialized doctors" you
describe, or will they simply be replaced by the currently rising ranks of
pharmacy technicians, who have just gained registration with the Board of
Pharmacy in my state (Texas)?

If you believe the academics and the regulators, pharmacists can
instant-message the Almighty. They are exquisitely trained clinical
professionals with an ever-expanding "key role" or "key position" on the
"healthcare team." In some settings, such as major teaching centers, this
may be true, but I've never spent much time in those centers. My 28 years of
experience (or, have I merely done the same year 28 times?) tell me that
such experience is rarified and concentrated in those centers and seldom
leaks out into the "gen pop" of practicing pharmacists. What most of us
experience instead is the problem faced by Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance in
a classic episode of the TV series "I Love Lucy," in which Lucy and Ethel
(Vance) work on a conveyor belt in a candy factory wrapping candies. The
belt travels faster and faster, delivering more and more candies for them to
wrap, until the only way they can keep any kind of pace with the conveyor
belt is to start stuffing the candy into their mouths. Pharmacy has been a
grating, often mindless, mass production, and any experience of clinical
meaning has been a topic of amazed conversation when it happens.

Now, the requirements for a pharmacy degree have been ratcheted way, way up,
with a six-year Doctor of Pharmacy degree now the norm (it won't be long
before it's required for licensure.) The regulations have been ratcheted
way, way up. But, like candy bars, these represent empty calories. All that
knowledge does it fuel a sense of woe and danger--danger from the public,
danger from management, danger from regulators. We are seldom overtly called
professionals except in a court of law, when we are being tried by something
we OUGHT to have done. Yes, pharmacy pays better than it ever has before,
but remember the New Testament: "What profiteth a man if he gain the whole
world and lose his soul?"

Are you kidding me? The most frightening thing about this attitude is
what damage it can and will do the the profession as a whole.