Lawsuit Against CVS Claims the Company Overcharged Customers for Generic Drugs

According to NBC News, CVS Health Corporation is being accused of deliberately overcharging customers for generic drugs by making claims to the customers insurance companies at exaggerated prices in a lawsuit which has been filed this week at a San Francisco federal court.

The lawsuit alleges that as a result of CVS inflating the prices of generic drugs, customers incurred higher co-pays which exceeded the costs of paying for the drugs with no insurance or participating in the CVS discount program.

Kristen Broz, an attorney with Haufield, the firm which filed the lawsuit against CVS, is quoted by NBC,“We’ve seen people who pay $20 for a 30-day supply as their co-payments on a drug that was $11.99 for a 90-day supply had they been in the [discount program].” Broz suggested hundreds of thousands of customers have possibly been affected since 2008, according to her estimate.

The lawsuit filed by Hausfield seeks class-action status, a court order forbidding CVS from participating in such behaviors, and damages which have been unspecified.

Michael DeAngelis, CVS Health spokesman says the company has not been served with the lawsuit as of yet, so there are no comments to be made at the moment. However, DeAngelis did mention that co-pays are contingent upon a patient’s prescription coverage plan, and that a similar suit was dismissed in Massachusetts.

According to the lawsuit, one of the issues within the is CVS’s “Health Savings Pass” program, which provides discounts to those who do not have health insurance or opt out of using their insurance on a multitude of generic prescription medications, such as generic brands of Penicillin and Prozac. The suit claims that in lieu of presenting insurance companies with the discounted price provided through their savings program, CVS instead reported the more expensive price that a normal CVS customer not apart of the savings program would pay. As a result, customers were then charged higher co-pays.
The lawsuit claims CVS used the Health Savings Pass program to maintain and increase its market share by averting discounted prices from its competitors. Nonetheless, CVS used the program to serve as a mechanism to conceal the company’s actual and customary prices from third party payers.

 

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The post Lawsuit Against CVS Claims the Company Overcharged Customers for Generic Drugs appeared first on Harbor Village Florida.

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