The ubiquitous American pharmacy, Walgreens, has been under fire from the feds a lot lately. A year ago, parent company Walgreens Boots Alliance paid out $500 million to Uncle Sam after legal claims that it fueled opioid addiction in New Mexico by failing to stop illegal pill sales.
Now, the pharmacy giant has just agreed to pay $106.8 million to settle completely different claims that it improperly billed government healthcare programs for prescriptions that were never dispensed.
The settlement, announced by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) earlier this month, involved a legal dispute based on allegations that Walgreens submitted false claims to Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal health programs.
Federal healthcare law makes it clear that the accuracy of claims submitted to government programs is paramount, and that any discrepancies (even accidental ones) can result in severe financial and legal repercussions. In 2020, Walgreens self-reported issues with its billing systems, acknowledging that a software error had led to inadvertent billing for prescriptions that were never collected by patients.
The DOJ then investigated and brought a lawsuit against the pharmacy chain, claiming that it improperly billed federal healthcare programs for prescriptions that were processed but never picked up by customers between 2009 and 2020. This purportedly resulted in tens of millions of dollars in payments for undispensed prescriptions. The allegations...
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