A long-simmering lawsuit attempting to at least partially blame two of the larger pharmacy chains in the United States for a steep rise in drug overdose incidents came to a close today. Both CVS and Walgreens have agreed to the proposed terms and they will fork over a combined 10.7 billion dollars, with Walgreens paying a slightly higher amount. The companies have also agreed to implement more “robust” controlled substance compliance programs, prescription reviews and training programs. Going completely unmentioned in this settlement is the fact that nobody at either pharmacy chain actually writes prescriptions. And where will all of this money be going? To state and local governments, with a small amount going to indigenous tribes. (NBC News)

CVS and Walgreens have agreed to pay a combined $10.7 billion to settle allegations they failed to adequately oversee opioid painkiller prescriptions, thus contributing to America’s opioid addiction crisis.

The funds will be distributed to states, local governments and federally recognized tribes and will go toward opioid crisis abatement and remediation programs. CVS will pay $4.9 billion to states and political subdivisions and approximately $130 million to tribes. Walgreens will pay $4.95 billion, plus more than $750 million in fees for attorneys and costs. The payments will be made over time.

The pharmacy chains have also agreed to implement robust controlled substance compliance programs that will require additional layers of opioid prescription reviews and institute new mandatory training programs.

This entire process has bothered me from the beginning and I don’t say this because I’m downplaying the severity of the opioid overdose epidemic or the ongoing fentanyl crisis. Those are true disasters that we have yet to make much progress in taming. My question from the beginning has been framed around who we’re pointing the finger of blame toward.

If you read the response from a representative from CVS, you will see that they made no admission of error or wrongdoing. They simply framed the settlement as a way to “resolve these longstanding claims and put them behind us.” Since the deck was clearly stacked against them from the beginning, that was likely the best they could hope for.

If these pharmacy chains had been accused of selling drugs illegally or altering prescriptions, then they should certainly have been held accountable. But nobody has even suggested that. They were accused of not exercising enough “oversight” of the prescriptions they filled. Pharmacists do not write prescriptions. They have important, challenging jobs and they have to pass medical school like any other doctor, but diagnosing illnesses and prescribing medication to address those ailments are not in their wheelhouse. When they are handed a valid prescription by a patient that was written by the person’s healthcare provider, they are expected to fill that prescription correctly. That’s their job.

If they are to be expected to review each prescription they are handed and the history of both the patient and the doctor who wrote it, nobody’s prescriptions will be getting filled. That process would take forever. While I shudder to suggest this, perhaps the FDA or some related agency should be keeping a database of all of the prescriptions that are written with some software to identify problematic doctors who are a bit too free with their prescription pads. But I’m sure such a plan would immediately run into some sort of privacy issue.

Where is the lawsuit against all of the doctors who kept overprescribing all of these medications that were known to be dangerous? Where is the lawsuit against the pharmaceutical companies that offered rich perks and incentives to doctors and hospitals to purchase more of their drugs? How is it that we don’t see them being dragged into court and getting fleeced for billions to be handed out to state and municipal governments? Could it be because they all regularly make contributions to the politicians who are crafting the rules? Would you find it surprising if that were the case? You shouldn’t, because they’ve been doling out cash by the metric bucketload. And it goes disproportionately to Democrats.