The Epoch Times – Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill announced on June 24 that she has filed three separate lawsuits against pharmacy chain CVS, accusing it of engaging in unfair, deceptive, and unlawful practices that have “harmed Louisiana patients, independent pharmacies, and the public at large.”
The lawsuits were filed against CVS Health Corp, CaremarkPCS Health LLC, and their affiliated entities in central Louisiana’s St. Landry Parish.
Murrill said Louisiana is seeking both injunctive relief and restitution.
One of the complaints alleges that CVS’s pharmacy benefit management (PMB) unit, CVS Caremark, “controls multiple, interlocking stages of the pharmaceutical supply and reimbursement chain—from insurance to drug pricing, to pharmacy distribution and dispensing.”
PBMs serve as middlemen, negotiating prescription drug prices with manufacturers on behalf of employers and health plans, and setting the terms for how they are distributed to customers.
Murrill’s lawsuit alleges CVS has used its market power and vertical integration design to drive up drug prices to more than what they would be in a properly functioning competitive market.
“CVS and other PBMs continue to hide behind various confidentiality clauses to cover up the way they are manipulating drug prices—it’s wrong and unlawful. CVS will have to account for its actions,” Murrill said in a statement.
A second lawsuit alleges the company’s business practices with independent pharmacies of Louisiana constitute unfair competition, are “deceptive and substantially harmful to the public,” and are in violation of state regulations.
“Specifically, CVS’s abuse of its enormous market power to impose unethical and exceedingly high fees on independent pharmacies—under threat of being expelled from the CVS network—amounts to unfair competition and unfair trade practice,” Murrill’s office said in a statement.
“CVS is abusing its enormous market power to engage in covert spread pricing to further enrich itself at the expense of the independent pharmacies in its network” …
