Rite Aid Corp. is facing US Justice Department claims that it intentionally filled unlawful prescriptions for opioid painkillers as part of a whistleblower case over the sales.
(Bloomberg) — Rite Aid Corp. is facing US Justice Department claims that it intentionally filled unlawful prescriptions for opioid painkillers as part of a whistleblower case over the sales.
Over a five-year period starting in 2014, Rite Aid pharmacists filled hundreds of thousands of opioid prescriptions that weren’t written for “a medically accepted indication” in violation of federal drug laws, federal prosecutors said Monday in a court filing.
The government is intervening in 2019 lawsuit filed by two Rite Aid pharmacists from North Carolina, Andrew White and Mark Rosenberg, who accused the chain of dispensing opioids without valid prescriptions or “outside the usual course of the professional practice of pharmacy,” according to court filings.
It’s another step in efforts to hold opioid makers, distributors and retailers accountable for downplaying the painkillers’ addiction risks and sacrificing patient safety for billions in profits. More than a million people have died of drug overdoses since 1999, many tied to opioids.
Officials of Camp Hill, Pennsylvania-based Rite Aid declined to comment Monday on the Justice Department’s move to intervene in the suit.
$40 Billion Recovered
More than $40 billion has been recovered by states, cities and counties that have accused companies such as Johnson & Johnson, McKesson Corp. and Walmart Inc. of either illegally marketing opioids or failing to properly oversee sales of the painkillers.
In August, a federal court jury in Cleveland concluded Walmart Inc., CVS Health Corp. and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. helped create a public-health crisis by failing to properly monitor opioid prescriptions and a judge ordered the companies to pay $650 million in damages.
Read More: Walmart, CVS, Walgreens Must Pay $650 Million in Opioid Case (2)
Rite Aid is accused in the Justice Department’s version of the suit of failing to have proper systems in place to monitor prescriptions of the highly addictive painkillers. Prosecutors found evidence of patterns of improper prescriptions being sold, such as “early fills” of fentanyl and oxycodone prescriptions before an earlier prescription ran out and prescriptions for extremely high doses and excessive quantities of opioids that “fed opioid dependence and addiction,” according to court filings.
“Rite Aid’s pharmacists repeatedly filled prescriptions for controlled substances with obvious red flags, and Rite Aid intentionally deleted internal notes about suspicious prescribers,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said in a statement.
Rite Aid officials agreed in August to pay $30 million to the State of West Virginia to resolve its suit claiming the chain failed to oversee and report suspicious orders of prescription painkillers.
Holly Froum, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst following opioid litigation, has said that companies face about $50 billion in exposure from state and local government suits over the painkillers. Of that total, the pharmacies would wind up paying around $10 billion or less, Froum has said.
Shares of Rite Aid fell 1.8% after US markets closed.
The case is US ex rel. White v. Rite Aid Corp, 21-cv-1239, US District Court for the Northern District of Ohio (Cleveland).
(Updates with company comment in fifth paragraph)
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