As weight loss drugs like Ozempic continue to rise in popularity, economists are looking at their potential to disrupt the market. We asked a doctor turned business analyst which industries he thinks could see the most impact.
The Department of Justice announced a lawsuit on Wednesday accusing pharmacy chain CVS of filling illegal opioid prescriptions and billing federal health insurance programs, contributing to a nationwide epidemic of opioid addiction and overdose. The newly unsealed complaint in Providence, Rhode Island, federal court alleges that, from October 2013 to the present, CVS violated the federal Controlled Substances Act by filling prescriptions for dangerous quantities of opioids and dangerous combinations of drugs. It said the company regularly filled prescriptions from doctors running so-called pill mills, dispensing large quantities of opioids without legitimate medical reason. The Justice Department said the violations were driven by company-mandated performance metrics that led to red flags being ignored, and that in some cases patients died of overdoses shortly after filling illegal prescriptions. "We have cooperated with the DOJ's investigation for more than four years, and we strongly disagree with the allegations and false narrative within this complaint," CVS said in a statement. CVS agreed in 2022 to pay close to $5 billion over 10 years to settle thousands of similar claims by state, local and Native American tribal governments. It did not admit wrongdoing under the deal, which was one of a series of nationwide settlements by pharmacies, drugmakers and distributors totaling about $46 billion.
For years, P.B.M.s took payments from opioid manufacturers, including Purdue Pharma, in return for not restricting the flow of pills. As tens of thousands of Americans overdosed and died from prescription painkillers, the middlemen collected billions of dollars in payments. The details of these backroom deals — laid out in hundreds of documents, some previously confidential, reviewed by The Times — expose a mostly untold chapter of the opioid epidemic and provide a rare look at the modus operandi of the companies at the heart of the prescription drug supply chain. The P.B.M.s exert extraordinary control over what drugs people can receive and at what price. The three dominant companies — Express Scripts, CVS Caremark and Optum Rx — oversee prescriptions for more than 200 million people and are part of health care conglomerates that sit near the top of the Fortune 500 list. The P.B.M.s are hired by insurers and employers to control their drug costs by negotiating discounts with pharmaceutical manufacturers. But a Times investigation this year found that they often pursue their own financial interests in ways that increase costs for patients, employers and government programs, while driving independent pharmacies out of business. Regulators have accused the largest P.B.M.s of anticompetitive practices. The middlemen’s dealings with opioid makers reveal a lesser-known consequence of this pay-to-play system: Seemingly everything — including measures meant to protect patients and curtail abuse — can be up for negotiation.
McKinsey and Company will pay $650 million over work it did for Purdue Pharma that federal prosecutors say helped fuel the opioid crisis. The settlement resolves criminal and civil Justice Department investigations into McKinsey's work helping Purdue increase sales of powerful opioids despite concerns about addiction.
The much-anticipated launch of Blue Shield of California’s drug benefit venture with Amazon Pharmacy and the pharmacy benefit manager Abarca will debut in January, executives involved say.
Across the U.S., at least 7,000 pharmacies have closed since 2019, The Associated Press reported, citing data from the University of Pittsburgh. Of those, roughly half were independent drugstores.