Healthy Skepticism Library item: 12828

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Goldstein J.
CVS Caremark Settles Prescription Switching Probe
The Wall Street Journal 2008 Feb 15
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/02/15/cvs-caremark-settles-prescription-switching-probe/trackback/

Full text:

CVS Caremark is paying $38.5 million to end a probe by a bunch of state attorneys general into the company’s alleged practice of encouraging doctors to switch patients to different brand-name drugs.

The probe scrutinized the company’s pharmacy benefit management business, which handles companies’ prescription-drug insurance programs. The AGs claimed that Caremark pushed docs to switch patients to different prescription drugs, suggesting that the patients and health plans would save money.

But the company “allegedly did not clearly disclose to their client plans that rebates accrued from the drug switching process would be retained by Caremark and not passed directly to the client plan,” according to a statement from the Illinois AG. (Drugmakers sometimes woo PBMs with offers of rebates, to encourage the companies to move patients to their drugs.)

The company “expressly denied any and all allegations,” the Chicago Tribune reports.

Still, the settlement imposes a bunch of rules on when CVS Caremark can “solicit drug switches.” The company’s not allowed to do so, for example, when switching would result in a higher price for the patient. Also prohibited is soliciting a switch to a different brand-name drug from a drug that’s about to go off patent, or that already has a generic alternative.