News Briefs: CVS’s Omnicare Must Pay Feds $949M in Rx Billing Case

Jul 10
Jul 10, 2025

A U.S. district court judge on July 8 ordered CVS Health Corp.’s Omnicare division to pay a total of $949 million in penalties and damages related to a whistleblower lawsuit centered on Omnicare’s prescription drug billing practices. The suit, filed by a former Omicare pharmacist in 2015, claimed the firm assigned new prescription numbers to thousands of patients in long-term care facilities without necessary paperwork and pharmacist approvals, after their original prescriptions expired or ran out of refills, Reuters reported. In doing so, the suit alleged that Omnicare — which CVS bought in 2015 — improperly billed Medicare, Medicaid and TRICARE.

CVS said in a statement to Reuters that the lawsuit “centered on a highly technical prescription dispensing recordkeeping issue that was allowed by law in many states, adding that “there was no claim in this case that any patient paid for a medication they shouldn't have or that any patient was harmed.”
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Leslie Small

Leslie has been working in journalism since 2009 and reporting on the health care industry since 2014. She has covered the many ups and downs of the Affordable Care Act exchanges, the failed health insurer mega-mergers, and hundreds of other storylines spanning subjects such as Medicaid managed care, Medicare Advantage, employer-sponsored insurance, and prescription drug coverage. As the managing editor of Health Plan Weekly and Radar on Drug Benefits, she writes and edits for both publications while overseeing a small team of reporters who also focus on the managed care sector. Before joining AIS Health, she was a senior editor for the e-newsletter Fierce Health Payer, and she started her career as a copy editor at multiple local newspapers. She graduated with a dual degree in journalism and political science from Penn State University.