Washington, DC: Pharmacy customers of CVS Health Corporation (CVS) have filed a class action lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California alleging that CVS employed a fraudulent scheme to overcharge millions of customers across the country for generic prescription drugs.
CVS is alleged to have implemented and maintained a false and deceptive pricing scheme affecting more than 400 generic drugs, forcing customers with health insurance to pay CVS copayments far higher than the usual and customary price CVS charged its cash-paying customers.
CVS generates approximately $67 billion in annual revenues from its retail pharmacy business, and plaintiffs allege that CVS' wrongful overcharging is a significant percentage of those revenues.
According to the complaint, for seven years CVS has systematically been overcharging their insured consumers for prescriptions. The alleged scheme is especially harmful to those people with low or fixed incomes who use medications on a regular basis. Plaintiffs assert that the drug chain wrongfully has charged insured consumers inflated copayments on more than 400 generic medications, including some of the most commonly used drugs on the market today. According to the complaint, millions of people have been affected by this misconduct.
The plaintiffs seek to represent all consumers who were participants in third-party healthcare plans and who filled their prescriptions for certain generic drugs at CVS between November 2008 and the present, and paid more than prices available under the CVS Health Savings Pass program.
The plaintiffs are jointly represented by Washington, D.C.-based firms Hausfeld and Stein Mitchell Muse Cipollone & Beato LLP.
