CVS Health has announced an agreement in principle that would make it the first major pharmacy chain to reach a nationwide settlement of lawsuits over how it handled prescriptions for powerful & addictive prescription opioid painkillers that are linked to an overdose epidemic.
The company would pay about $5 billion over 10 years under a deal that, if accepted, would be one of the largest settlements over the crisis. Other pharmacies, including Rite Aid, Walgreens & Walmart have reached agreements with individual states.
CVS announced its proposed deal Wednesday as it released its quarterly earnings. The company did not admit liability or wrongdoing & said that nonfinancial terms remain to be resolved.
The company has launched educational programs & installed safe disposal units for drugs in stores & police departments, among other measures designed to reduce misuse of opioids.
In the lawsuits, governments said pharmacies were filling prescriptions that they should have flagged as inappropriate.
Under the settlement plan, CVS would pay $4.9 billion to state & local governments & about about $130 million to Native American tribes over the next decade. The exact amount would depend on how many governmental entities accept the terms of the deal.
The proposed settlement brings a nationwide tally of finalized & completed settlements between companies and governments to more than $45 billion.
Opioids have been linked to more than 500,000 deaths in the U.S. over the past 2 decades. Most of the deaths initially involved prescription drugs. As governments, doctors & companies took steps to make them harder to abuse & obtain, people with opioid use disorder increasingly switched to heroin, which proved more deadly.
In recent years, opioid deaths have soared to record levels around 80,000 a year. Most of those deaths involve illicitly produced version of the powerful lab-made drug fentanyl, which is appearing throughout the U.S. supply of illegal drugs.
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Source: AP
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