The Department of Justice accused Walgreens of filing millions of prescriptions without a legitimate purpose, including those for opioids.
The 300-page lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, alleged that Walgreens and its subsidiaries “dispensed millions of unlawful prescriptions in violation of the Controlled Substances Act,” and that the company “sought reimbursement for many of these prescriptions from various federal health care programs in violation the False Claims Act.”
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“This lawsuit seeks to hold Walgreens accountable for the many years that it failed to meet its obligations when dispensing dangerous opioids and other drugs,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “These practices allowed millions of opioid pills and other controlled substances to flow illegally out of Walgreens stores.”
The suit also alleged that Walgreens ignored evidence of this malpractice, including from its own pharmacists and internal data. Four different people who used to work at Walgreens filed whistleblower actions, according to the suit.
In response to the lawsuit, Walgreens said in a statement that it stands behind its pharmacists. The company said it is asking the court to clarify the responsibilities of pharmacies and pharmacists and to protect against the government’s attempt to enforce arbitrary “rules” that do not appear in any law or regulation and never went through any official rulemaking process.
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“We will not stand by and allow the government to put our pharmacists in a no-win situation, trying to comply with ‘rules’ that simply do not exist,” Walgreens said in the statement.
Walgreens is one of the country’s largest pharmacy chains with over 8,000 locations, and is based in the Chicago suburb of Deerfield, Illinois. The company this week announced it would shutter doors across five locations in Chicago as part of its plan to close 1,200 stores over the next three years around the country.